TRAFFIC SIGNALS

Dominion, Volume 32, Issue 259, 31 July 1939, Page 13

TRAFFIC SIGNALS

Complicated Street Junction A tally of traffic over a month has shown that the busiest rush-hour junction in Wellington is not any of those in the main retail shopping areas, but the junction of Wakefield Street, lower Taranaki Street and Jervois Quay. Ten years ago Jervois Quay and Wakefield Street were considered back streets of the city; motor drivers used them occasionally when they did not wish to be bothered with the traffic of the retail business streets. Since then a 1 change has come. Most of the heavy traffic avoid,® the shopping streets and uses Jewels Quay to pass from one end of the city to the other. Wellington East has developed greatly in the last decade, and Wakefield Street is the readiest way east when drivers do not wish to be held up at the various stopping places for trams in Courtenay Place. Institutions, too, have been moving eastward and there has been a de-finite-population trend to that part of the city. The method of traffic control, therefore, had to be very carefully thought out. It was decided, on account of the unevenness of the volume of traffic to adopt the traffic-actuated system, whereby wheeled traffic controls the signal lights by passing over a pad let into the surface of the road, as at the main entrance to Queen’s Wharf. But at the point in question the position Is more complicated, as five roads meet. Once used to the system, it should be difficult for drivers to fall into error. They have only to wait for the green light opening out the direction in which they wish to go. These lights must be strictly obeyed. It is dangerous to anticipate, or take a chance, as some drivers do with the timed signal lights; there might be a vehicle running at right angles, with the light in its favour for that moment. The pads are already down in Jervois Quay, but they still have to be provided in the Taranaki and Wakefield Streets approaches to the junction.