Portal:London transport/Selected biographies/3

Sir Charles Herbert Bressey CB, CBE (3 January 1874 – 14 April 1951) was a civil engineer and surveyor who specialised in road design. Bressey was Chief Engineer for Roads at the Ministry of Transport from 1921 to 1938. Between 1935 and 1938 he carried out research on road planning and motorway design in preparation for his Highway Development Survey, 1937 for Greater London published in 1938. He served as President of the Institution of Chartered Surveyors in 1938-9.

During World War I, Bressey served in the Royal Engineers and spent time in France and Flanders constructing military roads attaining the rank of Lieutenant-Colonel before he left the army in November 1919, when he joined the Ministry of Transport. His 1938 report proposed a series of high capacity motorways radiating outwards from the city and made recommendations for a series of circular routes around the capital and major road improvements in the central area, including tunnels under Kensington Gardens, Victoria Park and Islington High Street and a viaduct from Rotherhithe to Forest Hill. Although World War II delayed the implementation of any of the recommendations, they were subsequently featured in a number of post war reports such as Sir Patrick Abercrombie's County of London Plan and the Greater London Council's 1960s London Ringways scheme and were the origins of plans that were later combined to create London's orbital motorway, the M25. (Full article...)