TRAFFIC in Craven and the Yorkshire Dales has been a talking point ever since the days when people got cars and when early motor coaches, charabancs, started bringing holidaymakers from the larger towns and cities on day trips. Lesley Tate looks back to a very prophetic Craven Herald of 1954.

Today, campaigners want to see better public transport in the hope it will encourage people to take the bus to popular visitor places like Malham instead of using their cars. The narrow country roads to the village can be jammed with cars and coaches in the summer months, while the glinting in the sunlight of vehicles parked in fields given over to parking, can be seen from distant hills. It is the same at Ribblehead, where the lines of parked vehicles can be seen from the summit of Whernside, the highest of the Yorkshire Three Peaks.

And, 70 years ago, in August, 1954, the people of Craven were following with keen interest a census being carried out on the amount and variety of traffic using the district's roads.

The Craven Herald reported at the time that 'several major highways' cut through the district. It was, said the Herald "becoming increasingly difficult in which was once a wild and rugged area to find peace from the noise and bustle of motor vehicles."

In a editorial, the paper's editor complained: "In addition to the procession of heavy lorries on the main roads, there are now even bigger processions of vehicles carrying holidaymakers from towns and cities to the Craven Dales. Motor coaches poke their bonnets into quiet hamlets or travel over lonely fells. Motor cars move nimbly about the district and park in their hundreds at the beauty spots. Motor cycles whine and splutter."

"Mechanisation, this century", the editor went on, "with the invention of the internal combustion engine, is a revolution no less striking than that which affected industry in the first half of the last century. It has almost completely overthrown an old order and changed the habits of the nation."

The traffic census being carried out at the time would contain information that would 'surprise and astonish'.

The editor continued: "The first motor cars were treated as huge jokes. They were just a novelty. No one took them seriously, except the pioneers who sought to improve and modify them. People laughed when they saw motor cars stuck on hills like Buckhaw Brow, or being pulled homewards by horses recruited by the frustrated owner. There was opposition from those whose peace - and the tranquility of their horses - was ruined by the passage of the loud clanking machines on four wheels."

The speed of the new 'upstarts' was severely restricted at the start. "The man with the red flag who preceded them as they moved about the country was in himself a restriction against speeding".

"But", said the Herald, "soon the trickle of motorcars began to assume the status of a flood, and in 1920, the total number of motors was 860,000, and by 1937, there was something like 2,650,000 motor vehicles, including 1,800,000 private cars, and 460,000 motor cycles."

The war slowed production down, because of petrol rationing, and the need to use raw materials for war purposes, but it did produce a 'bewildering' new range of vehicles.

After the war, the export markets came first, and home markets were 'severely rationed', but by 1954, said the Herald, 'the floodgates are open and cars and an immense variety of other vehicles are coming into service in huge numbers."

"Today, our roads are being used more than ever by motor vehicles. The short-sighted policy of British Railways is continually increasing freight charges has given many firms no alternative but to rely on road transport. There has been an increase in tradesman's vehicles to serve the vast new housing estates of our towns and cities, and to provide a regular service to rural districts," said the Herald.

And, people had more leisure time. "People have a greater disposition to enjoy that leisure time in far-off places through the medium of private motor transport."

"We can only speculate about the census now being taken," said the Herald 70 years ago. "It will be some time before the facts and trends have been analysed and published. But, when the time comes, the details will be of great value in the way of planning new roads and keeping check on a social and commercial phenomenon of great magnitude.

"It may help us to plan better the complementary services of rail and road, and to face the inevitable problems that will arise as the number of road vehicles increases beyond the capacity of the present road system to take them. Above all, it may assist in providing the information upon which all road safety campaigns must be based."