GO-AS-YOU-PLEASE

Evening Post, Volume CVI, Issue 129, 28 November 1923, Page 6

GO-AS-YOU-PLEASE

CITY'S CASUAL TRAFFIC

STRICTER CONTROL ADVOCATED

"DUMB POINTSMEN" ON DUTY.

"It appeal's to me," remarked a visitor to Wellington from England and the United States to a "Post" reporter this morning, "that your motorists and walkers in this city are pretty haphazard and casual in the way they get through the city, and that as one thing only will put them on tho right lines, you should go in for that right away 'before the habit becomes too firmly ingrained. Your traffic control here is not what it should be." American and English traffic control was good because city authorities made provision for a sufficiency of patrolmen, but there, in America particularly, every policeman was also a traffic officer. In New Zealand, it appeared to him, the priice interested themselves in traffic problems only when they were detailed for actual point duty, or when someone walked too carelessly across tho road and met a fast-moving car, or when two ci^s moving on the same line but in opposite directions failed to pull up before their radiators crashed: A visitor to Wellington, who had been used to control methods overseas, was at first rather taken aback by the lack of coi'trol on half a dozen danger corners, and as likely as not got himself into trouble from the man behind when he pulled up to await a signal from a traffic officer who was not there. However, one- soon got over that and carried right ahead—and got through too; but someone's luck would change on one of those corners or crossings when all looked clear, and the annual list of accidents would creep up another figure. NO ACCIDENTS BEFORE 9 A.M. Another point that had struck him was that apparently accidents were not allowed to happen outside certain set hours, or at any rate a stranger-motorist might very well be pardoned for gathering that impression from the fact that even at the points where traffic dangers were so obvious that police control was the rule during the eight-hour day there was ■ no control before, say, nine in the morning and after five or half-past at night. Yet, in such a locality as Courtenay place the heaviest traffic, both vehicular and pedestrian, was probably between 7.45 and 9 a.m., and probably at that time traffic was most careless, since everyone was in a hurry to get somewhere to bego the day's work. Similarly, after 5 o'clock, the volume of all traffic; on wheel and afoot, rose to a peak, but very often the pointsman's day was over, and the going was go-as-you-please. STREET SIGNS AND TRAFFIC LINES. _ Courtenay place, he considered, was an ideal locality for the Wellington municipality to try out the more successful of the_ various "dumb pointsmen" dodges, which were adopted everywhere in the States and_ in England at points where the stationing of a pointsman proper was not perhaps warranted. These took many forms, but probably the most generally favoured was a slightly raised dome, brightly painted and so pla^d as to divert traffic to either side. At night the domes were lit by electric globes, showing red and green or merely white lights, the important point being to make it thoroughly clear to the ch-iver that he mustkeep to one side or the other. Paving lines were also remarkably effective in controlling traffic, the most common form being simply a wood block with a white rubber top let into the ordinary paving, and the same dumb traffic officer also did good duty in denning spaces over which pedestrians might cross with safety to themselves and to the motorist. If the Wellington municipality could not see its way to increase its staff of traffic inspectors and to arrange for stronger control by the police, it might very well consider the adoption of some such traffic-marking services. THROUGH TRAFFIC ONLY. From remarks he had heard from various Wellington motorists, and from reports of discussions which had appeared in the Press, he gathered that there was an idea that the bylaw which was to prohibit through traffic on certain city streets, unless the driver had definite business to transact in those streets, was unworkable, but that was nonsense; other cities had such regulations, and they were observed; but there one came back to the first point. There must be a sufficiently strong force of patrolmen to see that the rule was observed. Probably if one could take a tally of the business of all those who drove cars through Wellington streets, the most remarkable point about the figures would be that so many of them took the shopping streets for no other reason than that they liked to make the town look busy, thereby actually going well out of their way to get from a given point to another. Not only were Wellington streets narrow in the first place, but they were made more congested by double tram tracks, and the lay-out was undoubtedly bad. Plainly, strict traffic rules were doubly necessary in this city, and the time to begin to enforce them was not when traffic had developed to such an extent that they became absolutely imperative, but at the present moment, for good habits in road usage grew up just as slowly as bad habits faded ouut.