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Some time ago. Pete Estes' storage shed in . Sperryville held a great mix of valuable antique toys and other stuff.
In rooting through a stack of old magazines one Memorial Day I found an ancient magazine. bought it, read a few articles and then stored it away. I ran across it a few months ago and looked at it again.
The magazine was called. “The Nineteenth Century and After." It was published in England in May 1903, exactly 100 years ago.
What intrigued me was an article entitled, “London Congestion and Cross-Traffic.” This was in May 1903, mind you.
The author noted, “...in our streets today, for all vehicles, we limit our speed of progression to two rates—the trotting and walking pace of a horse. In the future this limitation will go by the board, the new generation will demand we go faster, and we shall have light carts covering the ground at 12 miles an hour instead of six, and coal carts, brewer's drays and heavy vans doing six miles where they did three before.”
Now, read the following from the London newspaper, “The Financial Times” of Feb. 13, 2003. “Vehicles in central London move no faster today than horse-drawn omni-buses did 100 years ago.”
A chart in the article showed the average traffic speed in central London during morning peak hours as 10 miles per hour—100 years had passed; 12 mph had not been attained.
On Feb. 17, four days later, things changed in central London. Owners of personal cars and trucks coming from outside started to pay $8 to enter central London between 7 a.m. and 6:30 p.m., Monday through Friday.
License plates were read and recorded by over 800 cameras at boundary lines. The plate numbers were checked
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