ABSTRACT
In 1936, the British Ministry of Transport erected 3 miles of guard rails along a major traffic highway in East London, separating pedestrians from motor vehicles. It was the first large-scale installation of such technology and was presented as a modern response to a modern problem: an attempt to reduce the carnage of traffic accidents on the increasingly motorized streets of the capital. Its promoter was the new Metropolitan Police traffic commissioner, Alker Tripp. Yet the word Tripp used to describe his scheme – ‘segregation’ – raises interesting questions about the cultural geographies of mobility in modern London. Tripp had recently visited Chicago to study traffic control, but spent his nights there accompanying local police officers on their night-time cruises around black and minority ethnic neighbourhoods. His secret report on the visit, together with his other writing on the problem of traffic control, reveals attitudes towards race, class and gender that invite a deeper reading of the guard rails. What architectures of hurry did Tripp construct – and how influential were they?
