MORE TRAFFIC LIGHTS

Evening Post, Volume CX, Issue 32, 6 August 1930, Page 10

MORE TRAFFIC LIGHTS

MID-CITY CORNER

TRAMS AND THE SIGNALS

A further set of traffic control lights is now being installed at the corner of Willis, Manners, and Boulcott streets, and will be in operation in a week or two. The system will bo the same as at Courtenay place and the Bank of New Zealand corner, i.e., three lights, but it is to be hoped that more consideration will be given pedestrians than has been done at the Bank corner. There was at one, time some talk of bringing in a fourth light, blue, being suggested, as the pedestrians' light, but the idea is not being carried out in this new installation. Pedestrians will accordingly continue to dodge, with a greater or less agility, depending upon the intervals arranged between the change of lights. THREE LIGHTS OUT OF DATE. Frequent references in American nowspapers to traffic control by means of lights make it- clear that the threelight system is there regarded as out of date: the pedestrian has also to bo given a fair chance of getting about his business, not merely in bare safety, but in reasonable comfort of mind. New York's attempt, by means of stiffer bylaws, to make pedestrians obey the lights was a failure: the pedestrian objected strongly to be told what he should do when no provision was madfi for him to do it. Now the three-light signals have been replaced by four-light systems, and, commenting upon this quite-recent improvement, one of the American papers which arrived by the last mail states that it; is the intention of the city authorities to prosecute offending pedestrians and to fine them on the .iame scale as offending motorists. The paper states that a big batch .of pedestrians were to be called before the! Courts, but "when the pedestrians appear they will form only part of the crusade's victims, for the police also found 22 motorists whom they thought guilty of traffic violations. Many of these were charged with starting ahead suddenly when the pedestrians had the right of way immediately following the turn of the'lights. The regulations laid down allow a walker who starts with the light to complete his course, even though the red light flashes against, him half-way over." ' -....•-.■ The idea of q pedestrian having a real right of way across a Wellington street would come as a delightful novelty to many old people and to. women with children, and it would be a novelty to which the vast majority of motorists would surely offer no objection. . . BEATING THE RED. A few days ago a correspondent drew" attention to a tendency on the part of tramway motormen to draw up a rule of their own for the lights at the Bank of New Zealand corner, moving away immediately the yellow showed, preceding the real "come-on" green light. A "Post" reporter who stood on the corner for a few.minutes to-day noticed precisely tho . same thing, tram after tram moving off before the green shone. Motorists naturally follow . suit, and were in some cases over the crossing before the yellow had gone. There is another new practice at the corner: a well recognised and very necessary bylaw says that motorvehioles'must come to a stop behind a tramcar pulled up at a passenger stop. At the Bank stop this is not so: motorists driving up Lambton quay towards Willis street now fairly, consistently squeeze past tramcars waiting, for .-the green (but more often the yellow) light" to let them into Willis street, and' then shoot ahead when the red goes. If the practice is allowed to become general at this corner the tendency to squeeze past tramcars at other stops will grow, and the safety of passengers will be considerably reduced.