RANDOM NOTES

Dominion, Volume 29, Issue 134, 2 March 1936, Page 8

RANDOM NOTES

Sidelights on Current Events (By Kickshaws.) Cabinet, it is said, has not yet considered licensing bookmakers. Bookmakers seem efficient enough already. * » » Britain’s motives regarding Abyssinia, it is claimed, are entirely selfish. Well, what about a country that goes and grabs chunks of Abyssinia without even saying “please” We thought those Chinese war lords knew how to complicate matters, but they must be green with envy at the way they can do it in Japan.

“What is a city?” writes “A.” "In England the headquarters of a bishop's diocese is a city because it is so described in the Royal Letters Patent establishing the See. As the first bishops of Christchurch and Nelson were appointed by the Crown, the towns became ‘cities’ under the Royal Letters Patent held by these two bishops. Later on, when the Church In New Zealand set up its own constitution, the Crown lost its prerogative of appointing bishops here. There were no further Royal Letters Patent issued. The headquarters of a bishop’s see was, therefore, no longer cfeated a city by the Crown. A town over a certain size in New Zealand has been declared a city by an Act of our own Legislature. Nelson, however, with less than the requisite population, remains a ’city' by virtue of the original Royal Letters Patent.”

Mr. Theodore Thomas, newlyappointed as general manager of the London Transport Board, is said to control 8500 vehicles which transport 8.000,000 passengers daily. His problem is not a simple one. The 8500 vehicles he controls, plus the 30,000 other vehicles he does not control, are so thick in London they stick fast and tight for most of the day The wise person who wishes to get anywhere goes by underground or tube. One hears a lot of talk about the control of vehicles in London. The fact that one can usually walk faster than the vehicles can travel through the busy areas seems to indicate that Gilbert and Sullivan should be called in. It may indeed take half an hour to travel by road half a mile through the streets of London. This applies particularly to the busy seasons such as Christmas when traffic solidifies in the streets. Just what the newly-appointed general manager is going to do about it probably not even he himself knows.

This traffic problem in cities is not a matter to be discarded lightly. It will not solve itself. In Wellington the problem has, as yet, scarcely arisen. Possibly we may be able to take advantage of the problems that confront others. London, of course, abolished trams in the main thoroughfares a long time ago. We have not reached a stage when that is necessary, if we are to believe the experts. That time must come, however. Thanks to experience gained elsewhere, we can make plans to meet the change. Glasgow still sticks to her trams. When one of them starts they all start on the same street and when one is pushed out the other end of Glasgow a new one enters. All cities are busy solving their own traffic problem, or rather not solving it. The problem does not seem to have any solution. One can but mitigate matters. Presumably if London had nobody to organise its traffic, 1936 model ears would be so out of date when they reached their owners there would be an outcry, * * • It is indeed a curious fact that the arrival of swift transport has probably reduced the speed of travel in busy city streets to less than that of the horse age. In this strange manner does progress get tangled up in its own feet. If only some far-sighted person’ had been able to realise that everybody would own a car as against one person in 100 owning a carriage, perhaps we might have had time to adjust our city streets to the requirements demanded of them. As it fe, every large city is up against the fact that its main streets are overloaded. Unless new streets can be supplied, the present ones will continue to get more overloaded until the situation solves itself by reducing itself to absurdity. The culprit undoubtedly is the motor-car. Nobody dreamed that a passenger-carrying vehicle could be made at a rate faster than it was then possible to turn out pins. In the end these huge motor-construction plans must have a limit. It will not, it seems, be demand that sets the limit, but room to run the new toys that pour into the streets and roads at the rate of a score a minute. • » • If the eity streets are getting full up. a similar problem is also to be seen on the roads outside the cities. There are in the world at the moment very nearly 40,000,000 motor-cars. There are only 7,000,000 miles of roads in the world suitable for motor-cars. Thus, at the moment, one may expect to meet a motor-car on a world tour six times every mile. Six c rs to the mile is surely an indication that the roads are failing to get built at a rate fast enough to accommodate the motor-cars One has only to drive into Wellington on a tine Sunday evening to appreciate this fact. One has only to drive into London under similar conditions to appreciate that we have no real traffic problem compared with the solid miles of motor-cars elsewhere. Britain, however, would appear to be rapidly reaching a “road full’ statu. At R moment there are 14 motor-eais o every mile of road. Britain is. therefore, nearly twice as full up as the United States of America, despite be fact that that country owns three-tittns of the motor-cars of the world. » ♦ “

How the problem of the roads will be solved to accommodate the motorcars has never yet been revealed. Already high speed roads have been built in some countries to take tot burden of through traffic. One sees such roads being built in Germany and already mauv have been built in ItalyIn New Zealand we have not even a sealed ’road from Wellington to Auckland. The improving of a road does not, however, solve the problem Rather does it complicate it by encouraging more traffic. Possibly the time is not far ahead when roads will have to be duplicated. They will be laid side by side or oue on top ot tne other. There may be, in fact, several tiers of roads. Efforts to compete with the rate with which motor-cars pour out on to the roads is by no means cheap It costs up to £lO,OOO a mile to build some roads. We in New Zealand have scarcely got past the gravel age so far as roads are concerned. Nevertheless the bitumen roads and the concrete roads are so expensive an thorities think hard and long before they lay them down. But that is only the'edge of the expenses that will have to be met as the decades fly by.