The Press TUESDAY, FEBRUARY 26, 1963. Master Traffic Plan

Press, Volume CII, Issue 30066, 26 February 1963, Page 12

The Press TUESDAY, FEBRUARY 26, 1963. Master Traffic Plan

Most of the criticism of the Christchurch master trans* portation plan (including that in letters to the editor of “The Press”) is based on two fundamental misconceptions. The first is that a better reading system would benefit only selfish commuters, who should take a bus or walk. The second is that, if there is any doubt about how much traffic volume will grow in the next 20 years, the best thing to do is nothing. As to the first point, it is probably true that if everybody who had no absolute necessity to take a car into the centre of the city could be persuaded not to, the strangulation of traffic flow could be postponed. Two things should be said about this. It is impossible to filter cut unnecessary motor vehicles and it is not the commuter who will suffer most from congestion but bus passengers and commercial traffic generally. It simply is not true, as the Planning Study Group says, that only a small proportion of the population for a few minutes a day would benefit from better streets 20 years hence. If the group had bothered to consult drivers of buses, taxis, and trucks it would have learned that for much of the day driving on busy routes is already a difficult, frustrating, and dangerous business. Increase congestion by only 50 per cent, and timetables will become difficult to keep, running costs will soar, and accident rates will rise. As to the second point, to plan in advance of trouble is surely prudent. If any part of the plan is unnecessary it need not be built But suppose the townplanners (with all their sources of information) turn out to be right, after their plan has been scrapped in deference to their critics? Then Christchurch will have to resort to expensive improvisation that will probably prove to be too little and too late to save the centre of the city from decay. It should hardly be necessary to say that the plan when finally drawn up will not be a programme of works but an outline to which works can be related as they become necessary,

anything up to 20 years or more hence. The real value of the inquiries made by the Planning Study Group was in showing how difficult it would be to find any practicable and acceptable alternative to the draft plan. To build elevated motorways above Bealey and Fitzgerald avenues, as the group suggests, would seem more damaging to the city’s amenities than to run one alongside Harper avenue, and more expensive. The need tor encroachment on Hagley Park is chiefly to provide access to the motorway, and much the same amount of land will be needed whether the motorway runs over Bealey avenue or just to the south of it. It should be remembered that the traffic plan is not something devised for the benefit of traffic engineers. The Regional Planning Authority’s staff is concerned with everything that goes to make a city pleasant to live in—for all its citizens. The traffic plan is only an instrument to this end. Much other development depends on the reading plan, which in turn has to conform to existing and projected land uses. If Christchurch chooses an inferior plan, or delays too long before it is forced into a good one, the consequences will be felt for many years. An improved reading system is not only desirable socially and economically; it is desirable in terms of humanity. Cape Town, a city rather larger than Christchurch but in many ways comparable, estimates that by 1966, when it will have practically completed its first 10year, £2O million freeway system, the accident injury rate will be cut by 1000 a year and the death rate by one a week. Those who are prepared to defend Hagley Park to the last should remember that they will do so not with their own lives but with the lives of many persons yet unborn. If, to save these lives, a small piece of the central park should be taken and equivalent park provided somewhere else, what right has the present generation to say that it should not be done?