GREAT TRAFFIC DAY

Evening Post, Volume CXXIV, Issue 40, 16 August 1937, Page 10

GREAT TRAFFIC DAY

EXCELLENT CONTROL

TWO HOURS TO CLEAR CITY

BOTTLE-NECK HALTS

How many cars there were in Wellington on Saturday nobody pretends to know except within wide limits, but the traffic people are agreed that the cars from the Manawatu, Wanganui. tho Wairarapa, and Hawke's Bay totalled thousands. One estimate is that 6000 cars came in over the main roads, through the Horowhenua area, - and over the Rimutakas, on Friday and during Friday night. That looks almost too impressive a figure, but the Automobile Association officers who made that estimate were guessing carefully, not wildly. They were still rolling in on Saturday morning, when the nearer areas sent their cars away to join the streams, till midday, when the roads were almost back to normal peak-hour volume again. What' is known with fair certainty is that 3000 cars were parked on the streets near the" park and south towards Island Bay, with a great number more parked about Newtown and the slopes towards Constable Street, possibly another 2000, and still there were in the city proper a good 5000 parked cars (the latter estimate being comparatively easily made by comparing rank after rank of cars with the number on the streets on a busy parking day, when the total within this inner area is about 3000). Whatever the number, the control was excellent, and if.praise was due to the officers who carried out the work c i the previous Saturday, still warmer praise Was due to them for their fine work after-the Test match. The parking of cars was a comparatively simple matter. Movable signs gave a clear indication of lengths ot roadway which had to be kept clear and generally these signs were well observed by drivers. The full staff of the city traffic office was on duty, and these thirty-three men were assisted in the early afternoon by the police, who divided their attention between cars and pedestrians, and by four patrol officers of the Automobile Association who did fine work after heavy hours on the outer roads earlier in the mornThere would have been no possibility of parking the city, Hutt Valley, and visiting cars near the park, and_ after their experience of the previous Saturday the majority of drivers did not attempt to do so, as was shown by the full 5000 cars left in the city area from the Basin Reserve to the railway station area: these parties left their cars well away and went on by tram, and' others were content to find road space well away and to walk half an hour or so to the park. FROM THE NEARER PARKS. Such a wide spreading of parking was a relief to the police controlling pedestrian traffic after the match and particularly so to the" tramway people. The main routes to the city were kept clear of motors under the plan of dividing "car traffic to east and west; and so smoothly did this plan work that the streets about the park were cleared of parked machines within three-quar-ters of an hour. That was not nearly the whole car story, for if it had been comparatively easy to divide the streams in Wellington South—via Island Bay and the waterfront road, over Constable Street on one side, and by Adelaide Road, Hanson Street, Tasman and Wallace Street on the other—the streams met again to build up a procession miles in length in Jervois Quay, past the station, and along Thorndon Quay. Wherever there was a feasible side route drivers swung away from the main lines, to the left to Wellington Terrace, for instance, as an alternative to the Jervois Quay stream, but if they were bound out of Wellington they had to join again at Lambton or at the north end of Thorndon Quay. TWENTY MILES OF CARS. By the time the 3000 or so cars had got away from the park and reached the city the drivers of the 5000 cars parked in the city had reached them by tram and pressed the starters, and the cars left further from the park were following close behind, joining in from every side street. The match was over at 3.45, and the first of the cars reached Jervois Quay a few minutes after four, but it was an hour and three-quarters before the last car of the procession—a good twenty miles long—passed down Jervois Quay and was waved on at the railway station. The abrupt ending of the stream was remarkable: at half-past five the four city officers and the Automobile Association patrolman were up to their necks in it, and at 5.31 there was the first gap since four o'clock, and it stayed a gap. Wellington's .finest traffic cavalcade had petered out. CARS AND TRAIN PASSENGERS. The station area was the most serious bottle-neck, for at the height of the rush of cars trams turned loose floods of train passengers who could not possibly have reached the station but for the frequent stopping of the car stream, and there was further delay in that traffic had divided at the Whitmore Street-Customhouse Quay junction, and the two lines had to join again at the Bunny Street corner, with cross traffic jumping on the clutch for the chance to get away to the western suburbs. The station 'delays were of benefit to drivers further along, for the gaps ■ gave still more cars coming in Irom Molesworth Street places in the line and stretched out the stream from

bumper to bumper crowding to reasonable driving space. Without exception everyone took the delays in good part—why not after the day's result?