Road restriction

Press, 8 September 1978, Page 12

Road restriction

Sir, — I was wondering if the Christchurch City Council or the Ministry of Transport could offer me any reasonable answer about the restriction of traffic between the Durham, Lichfield, and Cashel Street intersections. The sign reads: “No entry except buses and taxis.” I can fully understand allowing buses through as they have a timetable to run to. Being a van driver myself, I cannot figure out the difference between myself and a taxidriver. We are both giving a service, and there are a lot of commercial vehicle drivers who think this restriction is wrong. As there is no taxi stand there, I am sure there must be some other explanation. — Yours, W. WOOD, August 23, 1978. [The City Engineer, Mr P. G. Scoular, replies: “The restriction is applied to limiit the volumes of traffic travelling south towards the Dur-

ham Street-Lichfield Street intersection. Since the opening of the new river bridge traffic patterns in this area have changed with the major movements now occurring on Lichfield Street and from the new bridge. The capacity of the signals at the intersection of these streets is critical and, consequently, it is essential that the third movement (from the short section of Durham Street north of Lichfield Street) be limited as much as possible. This has been achieved by restricting the movement to buses and taxis only—services involving the carriage of fare-paying passengers. If goods vehicles were also permitted to make this movement the additional traffic from this direction would overload the signals, resulting in increased delays, with queuing and congestion, to all users of the intersection.”]