PROFESSOR SIR COLIN BUCHANAN, who has died aged 94, was an expert on transport and

nearly 40 years ago warned that Britain's towns and cities would become paralysed by traffic

congestion.

The Buchanan Report, called Traffic in Towns, was published in November 1963, when there

were fewer than seven million cars on Britain's roads. 

Yet the picture it painted was almost apocalyptic in tone: "It is impossible to spend any time on

the study of the future of traffic in towns," said the report's steering group, "without at once being

appalled by the magnitude of the emergency that is coming upon us. We are nourishing at

immense cost a monster of great potential destructiveness [the motor vehicle], and yet we love

him dearly. To refuse to accept the challenge it presents would be an act of defeatism."

So dismal a prognosis clearly demanded remedies, and Buchanan was not short of suggestions.

It was, he said, "inevitable" that traffic would have to banned from parts of some towns and cities.

In the larger cities, he proposed underground car parks, as well as the demolition of existing

buildings and roads to allow traffic to proceed at ground level with shops - and pedestrians - on a

level above. He also recommended parking controls.

Other of Buchanan's proposals still excite the interest of those struggling to deal with the problem.

He suggested, for example, a "congestion tax" on car owners, an idea recently favoured by the

Mayor of London, Ken Livingstone; Buchanan also drew attention to the importance of cheap

public transport in city centres.

He insisted that it would be possible to provide for the unlimited use of cars only in the smaller

urban areas, and there only where environmental considerations did not rule out major

roadworks.

It was the Minister of Transport, Ernest Marples, who had commissioned the report in 1960; he

wanted to know how the country could cope with the growing demand for, and importance of, the

motor vehicle without becoming "a concrete desert". To do the job, Buchanan had a team of

seven and a supervisory steering group.

The Buchanan Report was widely praised - the AA and RAC hailed it as a "brilliant and

courageous document" - but it did draw some criticism; and there are those today who believe

that his bias towards accommodating traffic, rather than restraining it, led to an uncontrolled road

building programme which has proved detrimental.

The truth is that Buchanan had always recognised that the car's advantages were too obvious to

question and its popularity too great to reverse. In 1958 he had published a book, Mixed Blessing:

The Motor in Britain, in which he accepted that people were right to want to own a car; but he

stressed that society must also work out new ways of adapting to the problems that this brought.

In a lecture called "Standards and values in motor-age towns" delivered in 1961, Buchanan

highlighted the noise and pollution caused by heavy traffic, which had reached "the proportions of

a really disgusting nuisance". Oxford Street in London - since closed to private cars - he called

"the most uncivilised street in Europe".

When it came to predicting the scale of the problem, however, the Buchanan Report did err on

the side of pessimism: Buchanan forecast that there would be 27 million motor vehicles on

Britain's roads by 1980; in fact, it was only by the end of the year 2000 that the figure reached 28

million (23 million of these being cars). His forecast that the "saturation point" of 40 million would

be reached by 2010 now looks unlikely.

Colin Douglas Buchanan was born on August 22 1907 at Simla, in India, where his father was the

water engineer. Colin was to become the fourth in a line of civil engineers. His uncle, Sir George

Buchanan, was the senior partner of Buchanan and Halcrow, civil engineering consultants.

When Colin was still an infant, his mother brought him and his elder sister to Berkhamsted,

Hertfordshire, and he later attended Berkhamsted School. As a boy he was a keen cyclist,

sometimes riding as far as the Quantocks for a holiday.

From 1926 to 1929 Buchanan read Engineering for his BSc at Imperial College, London. He then

joined the Public Works Department, Sudan, where he worked on highway planning and bridges

until 1933. Returning to England, he spent two years with a firm of planning consultants in Essex.

At this time he bought his first car, which he used to take on camping trips, having run up his own

tent on a sewing machine.

Buchanan then moved to the Exeter office of the Ministry of Transport, where he was responsible

for trunk road improvements throughout the South-West; it was here that he began to develop his

interest in traffic problems, and also road safety, and as part of his research he went to look at the

German autobahns.

On the outbreak of the Second World War Buchanan was commissioned into the Royal

Engineers, serving in Egypt, the Western Desert (where he was attached to the Long Range

Desert Group) and the Sudan. He was responsible for constructing a long timber trestle bridge

across the White Nile at Juba.

From 1946 to 1960 he was at the Ministry of Town and Country Planning in London, working

mainly on planning and transport in the London area. Meanwhile, he had qualified as an architect,

and he designed his own house. He also took up caravanning, and built two caravans himself.

After the Ministry moved him to its Inspectorate, Buchanan led public inquiries, mostly into slum

clearance. Later, as Principal Inspector, he conducted inquiries into important projects such as

the Atomic Energy Research Establishment at Winfrith Heath, Dorset; the Oldbury Nuclear Power

Station, Gloucestershire; Trawsfynnydd Nuclear Power Station, Snowdonia; and the Piccadilly

Circus redevelopment. Ernest Marples moved Buchanan to the Ministry of Transport as Urban

Planning Adviser in 1961.

After completing his Report, Buchanan formed the consultancy Colin Buchanan and Partners,

and in 1963 he was appointed to the new Chair of Transport at Imperial College. From 1968 to

1970 he sat on the Roskill Commission into London's third airport, but submitted a minority report

dissenting, on planning grounds, from the recommendation that the airport should be constructed

north of the Chilterns in the Vale of Aylesbury - instead he argued for the site on Maplin Sands.

In 1974 he was appointed the first Director of the new School of Advanced Urban Studies at the

University of Bristol. He retired in 1984.

Buchanan was a Fellow and past Vice-President of the Royal Institute of British Architects, and a

Fellow and past President of the Royal Town Planning Institute, which awarded him its Gold

Medal. From 1980 to 1985 he was President of the Council for the Protection of Rural England.

He was appointed CBE in 1964, and was knighted in 1972.

Buchanan remained disappointed that action in the wake of his Report had been inadequate,

believing that an opportunity had been squandered. During his long retirement he pursued his

hobbies of photography, carpentry, and touring Britain and Europe in motor-homes designed and

fitted out by himself. He very reluctantly gave up driving at the age of 90.

He married, in 1933, Elsie ("Mick") Mitchell, who died in 1984. He is survived by their daughter

and two sons.