FIVE-WAY CROSSING

Evening Post, Volume CXXVI, Issue 46, 23 August 1938, Page 10

FIVE-WAY CROSSING

MORE TRAFFIC LIGHTS

WAKEFIELD STREET

The next set of traffic lights to be installed will probably be at the intersection of Wakefield and Taranaki Streets, where five lines of heavy traffic converge and where, during the morning and afternoon peaks, the volume of car and lorry traffic is probably as heavy as at any point in New Zealand.

. Electromatic, or traffic-actuated, signals similar to those at the Queen's Wharf gates will be installed, with the standard red, amber, and green lights, but an additional emergency control may be added to ensure the right-of-way for fire engines from the Central Station in Clyde Quay. This emergency control will be operated from the station and will' hold all the lights at red and operate a syren for so many seconds after the brigade leaves the station to give the engines a clear run through the intersection, as is done at Courtenay Place when the brigade is called to any point south of Courtenay Place.

The Wakefield Street-Taranaki Street' intersection is a particularly difficult point for manual control, not merely because of the volume of traffic, but because the angles at which the lines of cars approach the pointsman. The lights control will give a clear indication to traffic and pedestrians in each direction.

Another intersection at which lights are to be installed, though not at once, is the Tory Street-Courtenay Place crossing. Here the lines are simple enough, but the volume of motor and tramway traffic is very heavy.

It is proposed to go on with the installation of traffic signals to and from the overbridge between the Hutt Road and A'otea Quay in the meantime, but provision has been made in the preparation of the roadways for conduit channels, so that the laying of control cables will be a simple matter.

There is no question that during the past few months a far more general recognition has been given the light and other traffic signals, with the best observance, by a long margin, at crossings where there is light control, for these signals are positive and generally clear in nrfeaning. At the wharf gates and at Courtenay Place, particularly during the afternoon rush, there is, however, just too much eagerness on the part of some drivers to get away on the amber light, between red and green.