SILENT AS NIGHT

Evening Post, Volume CXVIII, Issue 54, 1 September 1934, Page 8

SILENT AS NIGHT

London's traffic experiment has been so successful as to arouse the interest of provincial towns, and the Minister of Transport has been asked to help them by instituting a zone^of traffic silence. The experiment is not without its interest for New Zealand. We certainly; have not the-problem of

nightly noise created by the dense traffic of such cities as London, New York, and Chicago. By timely attention to town:planning we can avoid part of the trouble. Elevated railroads and all-night tramway traffic are unknown here, but the motor traffic in some quarters is already disturbing and, if unchecked, it will grow greater rather than less. The time for drastic control may not yet have conic; but it is never too soon to begin teaching. Thoughtlessness accounts for much of the existing noise —the long farewells of people who, like Juliet, find parting such sweet sorrow that they say goodnight till it be morrow, the slamming of car doors, the grinding of brakes. In the side-streets of suburbs this is not of regular nightly occurrence, but iivthe inner residential'areas it is reaching the stage where, if consideration is not shown, a demand for corrective bylaws will be made. Dogberry's instruction lo the watch is still good advice:

You shall also make no noise in the streets; for, for the watch to babble and to talk is most tolerable and not to be endured.

Watch: Wo will rather sleep than talk: wo know what • belongs to a watch. , __