WALKERS ON ROADS

Evening Post, Volume CIX, Issue 54, 5 March 1930, Page 11

WALKERS ON ROADS

ROUND THE WATERFRONT

DODGERS ON THE DRIVE

Membsrs of to» Antomsbilc Club on Monday evening discussed means for the regulating and the educating of people who will, or must, wander, or hurry, along country roads on foot, but it is not only on country roads that the. walkers and motorists take their chances of trouble. Tho city's show motor parade, tho Marine Drive, is for practically the whole of its length without a footpath. Evans Bay, at one time a yory popular Sunday afternoon walk, is now a motor way. The Point Halswell road has in some lengths a rudimentary path. Nearer ,Karaka and Worser Bays there is a very narrow pathway along a narrow road. Through Branda Pass anl on to LyaTl Bay there is no path, and again from Lyall Bay to Island Bay, a very pleasing length of road for fine afternoon strolling, the pedestrian must got along as well as ho can, first on one side, then on the other, according to the comparative smoothness of the roadside.

On tho eastern side of the harbour much the same state of affairs holds; there are bitumen motor tracks and rough roadsides, with makeshift footways, too narrow for Sunday and holiday foot traffic in some lengths.

The several councils concerned have always recognised the need of paths for Valkers, but have'always deplored tho impossibility of providing them with the finance available, and probably it would bo a most difficult tiling to have pedestrian traffic regulated until some provision was made to make regulation possible.

Conditions are ■ dangerous for - both walkers and motorists in the Hutt Valley from the Lower Hutt boundary onwards. There pedestrians share the, bitumen with cars and lorries, not from preference—or through "pigheadedness" as some irato drivers havo been Ward-to romarlc—but simply because a inilo of wading through wet grass or dry and dusty grass, knee high, with bumps and hollows, lumpy road metal, sticks and brambles, is not so pleasant after all. Upper Hutt Sunday proinenaders have some footpaths, but do not use them consistently.

Tho wonder of it is that so fow accidents occur on city and suburban roads, tho- Marine Drive, east harbour foreshore road, and Hutt Valley roads, considering the volume and speed of motor traffic and the numbers of people, women and children as well as men, who must Walk on the paved surfaces boeause there is no other place for them to walk. Long practice has, in the main, made theiii accomplished dodgers.