Streets and Traffic.

Press, Volume LXV, Issue 19671, 15 July 1929, Page 8

Streets and Traffic.

It is becoming increasingly difficult to understand why City Council after City Council should be so prone to clutter up the City streets with impediments to the free flow of wheeled traffic. There is the Clock Tower, a heritage from the days when the streets carried nothing more portentous than slow moving horse-drawn vehicles and the more nimble bicycle, when the locality was not such a key position in the matter of traffic as it has since become, and when the importance of keeping the area clear was not foreseen. There is the semi-subterranean structure at the junction of High and Cashel streets, built on another key traffic site, and at a time when the Council should have known the blunder they were making by withdrawing from road users a very vital area. There is the new Clock Tower now in course of erection near the Baptist Church, which, though it is not an obstacle now, and is something for which the City is indebted to private generosity, and is very grateful to have, will be an anxiety as the business part of the City spreads eastward, as it is now doing and will continue to do. There are the impediments in the Square, the blame for which rests partly on the Tramway Board and partly on the Council, and the result of which has been a serious contraction of the available road width. And as a distressing finale there is the present plan to anchor an island in the "bottle neck" at the Bank of New Zealand corner, the main entrance to the Square from busy converging streets, for the reason, as far as can be determined, that if it does no good it will do no great harm. It looks almost as if the Council regard the streets, and particularly the busy central streets, as having other uses than the conveyance of traffic, and see nothing harmful in dumping impediments just where the maximum inconvenience will be caused. Why this should be is not easy to explain, but there seems to be some sort of idea that the streets should be regarded as something in the nature of public areas where everybody should have free access and full rights of user whatever the situation may be. The notion that the streets should be retained for the specialised purpose of accommodating wheeled traffic and that such traffic should be given the dominant right of user, as opposed to the ancient Common Law principle favouring pedestrians, has still to be appreciated by many civic minds.