CORRESPONDENTS' VIEWS

Evening Post, Volume CXXIV, Issue 55, 2 September 1937, Page 10

CORRESPONDENTS' VIEWS

(To the Editor.)

Sir, —With regulations being laughed at, and with money being spent without result, I would like to suggest ways and means to overcome present difficulties. Recently I have visited the United States of America and the Continent of, Europe, and find that traffic can be properly handled ana* pedestrians taken care of, , (a) Traffic control: This is most effectively controlled with traffic lights, which should be at all important traffic crossings in the city, not as we have it now, with one set, at one end of the city, and a few you have to watch out for. Lights for traffic should be suspended in the centre each crossing, not 'at each corner, in this way they can ,be seen by drivers and pedestrians without any difficulty. To have smoothly running traffic without so many hold-ups, we could very well take the traffic men off point duty. Lights are so much better, they give equal time to traffic from each direction, not as we have things with the traffic men.

(b) Pedestrian control: AIL the herring-bone lines that can be painted will not give the control and the safety to pedestrians as we will have with traffic lights at all important points. Take for example at the Mercer Street crossing, ', opposite . the Evening Post building; traffic controlled with lights would set "everything right. Should our' perplexed authorities install further lights as suggested, they should insist that all traffic making . turns should turn on red lights, also- traffic should be guided by lanes, e.g., traffic turning to the left should when reaching the intersection, be in a lane to the extreme left. Traffic turning to the right, should be as near to the centr6 of the road as possible. Of course this is not always possible with nianyr streets that are no wider than lanes, but it can be the rule with wide; streets.

Our greatest setback to successful handling of traffic and pedestrians is that as yet we have not sufficient traffic, and insufficient people to make for strong and, hard and fast "penalties for transgressors, but better to start now with traffic lights everywhere and timed control.—l am, etc.,

PERCY A. STANTON.

"Safety ■ AH- the Time" agrees that the position at pedestrian crossing places has been allowed to become farcical, and he points ou^ particular instances in which 'the supposed right of the pedestrian iis nullified. At the intersection of Manners and Cuba Streets, he writes, traffic officers then^selves -open -lines of 'traffic while pedestrians are still making their way jover the marked crossings. The chief Blame for the unsatisfactory observance of the regulation he places on the motorist, and, he continues:

"I realise that to criticise , without offering a^remedy is not sufficient. I suggest that the method adopted at Wanganui is the best to date. One can always use a pedestrian crossing in that city with safety, and the motorist and the pedestrian observe the rules at all times. The reason that the rule is observed is that at each crossing is placed a large notice in black and red letters, with the slogan, 'Use this crossing and you have the right of the road.' This notice is read by all, and the Wanganui citizens are educated without traffic officers standing on street corners."