A charity he founded in 1950, the Rees Jeffreys Road Fund, continues to support UK transport-related projects.
He also explored Ireland, where he met Richard J. Mecredy, who helped form the Irish Roads Improvement Association.
[6] The RIA had been jointly established by the CTC and the National Cyclists' Union in October 1886,[7] and initially focused on production of technical literature distributed to highways boards and surveyors to promote improved construction and maintenance methods.
"[8] Also in 1903, a Royal Commission on London Traffic was established and proposed two major "avenues": east–west between Bayswater and Whitechapel via the City, and a north–south route between Holloway and Elephant and Castle.
Jeffreys took a different view, preferring ring roads, and in 1905, more than 80 years before completion of the M25 motorway,[9] proposed a "boulevard round London":[10] As many cyclists also became motorists, Jeffreys's allegiances and the balance of the debate began to shift; he "became an arch motorist and the RIA morphed into a motoring organisation".
Jeffreys also had roles with the Commercial Motor Users' Association and the Institution of Automobile Engineers (he was honorary treasurer from 1910 to 1933; the IAE merged into the Institution of Mechanical Engineers in 1947),[a] founded the Motor Union Insurance Co Ltd (he was a director for 23 years), and he became a life member of the RAC.
In 1908, he was also appointed secretary of the British Section of the Permanent International Association of Road Congresses (PIARC), a role which he later said "enabled gaps in my own knowledge to be filled from first hand information given by men who held positions of authority.
"[16] In 1909 when the Road Board was established to administer funds raised by David Lloyd George's new taxes on motor vehicles,[b] Jeffreys resigned from the CTC's Council[4] and as honorary secretary of the RIA to become the board's first secretary[18] – though he continued to recognise the pioneering role of cyclists (in his 1949 book, The King's Highway,[19] he noted: "Cyclists were the class first to take a national interest in the conditions of the roads.").
[22][23] While Jeffreys blamed Treasury, landowners and railway opposition, a civil service inquiry found the board was badly administered and had insufficient technical expertise.
[d] By this point, in 1918, Jeffreys had resigned as the board's secretary in order to campaign for better roads as a free agent[22] and chairman of the RIA.
Jeffreys said Churchill was spouting "political dope": English roads were narrow, ill-designed and abounding with hidden corners and blind turns and were the most congested and overcrowded in the world.
[32] In 1934, he visited Germany and, with officials from the Ministry of Transport and Fritz Todt, inspected highways from the airship Graf Zeppelin during the 1934 International Road Congress.
[5] He had been an art collector and after his death, 158 works—bronzes, lithographs, drawings and paintings (including works by Boudin, Corot, Degas, Augustus John, Matisse,[38] Picasso and Sickert, some of which he purchased from the artists themselves)—were auctioned at Christie's.
[40] Imperial College's Transport Library (next to the Letitia Chitty Reading Room) is sponsored by the Rees Jeffreys fund.
Trustees asked entrants to consider their vision of how roads (motorways, highways, streets and footways) could best work for everybody for the next 50 years.