Catalogue description Records created by the Board of Trade, London Traffic Branch, London Traffic Committees and the London Passenger Transport Board

Before 1919 the Home Office, the Metropolitan Police Office, the Board of Trade, and the various local authorities and transport undertakings all exercised limited powers of regulation of road traffic in London, but there was little provision for the co-ordination of policy.

In 1905 a Royal Commission on Traffic in London recommended the establishment of a London Traffic Board. This was not carried out, but a London Traffic Branch existed at the Board of Trade from 1907. The establishment of this branch followed a Report of the Royal Commission on Locomotion and Transport in London,1905. Its responsibilities were to investigate and advise upon transport problems in London and solutions proposed to them, to collect information and statistics bearing on those problems and to prepare an Annual Report to be laid before Parliament. The branch was disbanded in June 1916.

In November 1919, an Advisory Committee on London Traffic was set up under the chairmanship of Mr. Kennedy Jones, as a result of the findings of the Royal Commission on London Traffic in 1905, the Select Committee on Motor Traffic in 1913, and the Select Committee on Transport (Metropolitan Area) in 1919. The Committee's task was to co-ordinate and improve London traffic mainly through existing powers, and to consider and recommend a permanent Controlling Authority.

Technical sub-committees on traffic regulation, improvement of street facilities, and future development were appointed, and met regularly until the issue of the Commission's report in March 1920.

In November 1924, the London and Home Counties Traffic Advisory Committee was appointed. The Committee was constituted under section 1 of the London Traffic Act, 1924, and it absorbed the functions of the Advisory Committee's Technical sub-committee on traffic regulation. Its purpose was to advise and assist the Minister of Transport in the exercise of his powers relating to the improved regulation of traffic within the area defined in the First Schedule to the Act as the London Traffic Area.

Discussions and negotiations on the co-ordination of public transport in London continued through this period, saw the passage of the London Passenger Transport Act 1933 and led to the formation of the London Passenger Transport Board in the same year.

In that year, the London and Home Counties Traffic Advisory Committee was reconstituted under the provisions of section 58 of the London Passenger Transport Act. The committee had increased local authority representation, and was thus enabled more effectively to fulfil its important function as a liaison between the London Passenger Transport Board and the travelling public. The Committee was wound up by the London Government Act, 1963.