Traffic Control.

Press, Volume LXV, Issue 19690, 6 August 1929, Page 8

Traffic Control.

The reflations adopted by the City Council last night for the better control of street traffic are not exactly measures of desperation, but they are measures for which no one would dare to hope much more than that they will make filings no worse if they do not make them any better. The Council itself admits that it is arbitrary to select a portion of Colombo Street for the new parking restrictions, and it shrank from the task of registering and painting bicycles. In other words everybody agrees that traffic must be controlled, and most people agree about the broad principles of control, but as soon as an attempt is made to apply these principles it is impossible to avoid being at sixes and sevens. This is not surprising in the circumstances, since the problem is becoming bigger and more complicated every day, and we have almost no precedents to guide us. Above all we have not the first essential of a public accustomed and reconciled to control. Motorists are beginning to be disciplined into obedience to life-saving principles, but cyclists and pedestrians still go their own way and do it in their own time. They even suppose that they are entitled to go their own way and that motorists must accommodate them selves to the situation as best they can. So far as tbtrTTiotiirists are concerned this is an in jusfice rather than an ' vil. It is unfair that they should be saddled with the responsibility for all the accidents that happen, but it is certainly not desirable that they shou'd begin killing or maiming people who refuse to be fair and prudent. No further liberty or liberties must at present be conceded to car-drivers, but there mu.st be very sharp rest lotions of the liberties enjoyed by eye'ists and pedestrians. We shall hope that what the Council proposes to do is to

make offenders in these two groups really amenable to discipline, but the task will not be easy, and in the meantime the methods that the Council propose- to adopt remain a deep secret. This ma;, mean that the Council thinks it unwise at this stage to show its hand. What it probably means is it has no hand to show, but is as much in the dark as the average bewildered citizen.