The Press SATURDAY, MAY 29, 1965. National Traffic Police?

Press, Volume CIV, Issue 30763, 29 May 1965, Page 14

The Press SATURDAY, MAY 29, 1965. National Traffic Police?

The Minister of Transport (Mr McAlpine) should produce much more specific information on what he hopes to achieve by offering to replace local control of traffic by the enforcement services of the Transport Department. He should show precisely where local bodies have been deficient or inconsistent, and recognise that, ultimately, the courts, not traffic officers, decide how traffic laws shall be applied. If the law is open to misinterpretation it should be clarified.

Mr McAlpine has claimed advantages for the extension of Transport Department authority. He has advocated a better distribution of traffic officers by amalgamating the resources of, say, the Wellington city traffic department with the staff of the Transport Department, especially to augment patrols on the highways outside the city. How will this improve the enforcement of the law and the management of traffic in Wellington? If that city needs 73 or more men to patrol its streets seven days a week, that is that. The job will not be done better because it is possible to transfer some of those men to the roads which are now the responsibility of the Transport Department.

Acceptance of the offer is voluntary, says Mr McAlpine. Those local bodies which decline it because they believe they can do a better job for their citizens will hardly look favourably on the extension of payments through direct and indirect taxation while their own citizens bear the additional burden of rates for the local service. The Government proposes to use money from the National Roads Board’s income from petrol tax to finance the scheme. It is worth remembering that people other than motorists who pay this tax benefit from traffic control; but Mr McAlpine might be doing a better service if he shared some of that money with local bodies which are doing the job. The Transport Department’s enforcement staff has never been adequate for its admittedly heavy task of policing all the miles of open road as well as the many populous urban areas for which it accepts responsibility. The argument about the Wellington district admits this.

Such slight differences as there are between the traffic by-laws of different cities are simply explained: they match the variety of local conditions. No-one can appreciate these better than the local bodies, which see the enforcement of traffic laws in their proper relationship to traffic engineering, parking policies, accident patterns, and the general functioning of their cities. Traffic departments may not be the most popular divisions of local government; but at least they have a direct responsibility to the citizens they serve through their councils. There is no magic in uniformity, especially when uniformity is likely to spell a uniform inadequacy—too few staff spread too thinly over too wide a field. Mr McAlpine has yet to show where the State is doing a better job than efficient and capable local bodies.