TRAFFIC LIGHTS

Evening Post, Volume CXXVIII, Issue 4, 5 July 1939, Page 12

TRAFFIC LIGHTS

WAKEFIELD STREET CORNER

COMPLICATED INTERSECTION

The traffic light system which is to be installed at the Wakefield-Taranaki Street intersection next week will be the most complex so far erected in Wellington, and in New Zealand for that matter, for five lines converge, and during certain hours the volume of traffic is particularly heavy.

Manual control has been in force during peak hours for some time, but the men on duty have never claimed to have reached a high efficiency, for it is a physical impossibility for a pointsman to handle such heavy volumes—Jervois Quay has easily the highest traffic density in the city—on converging lines. A pointsman can face only so many ways at once, but the lights look round and full circle, and, as at the Queen's Wharf gates, will sort the traffic • out by pad control in, the roadway. The electrical equipment, however, will be more complicated than at the wharf gates, combining the pad control, a check control by clock, and safeguards for pedestrians. An island will be set out in the open space to divide traffic lines.

DIFFICULT POINT NEAR STATION.

A point which is very difficult for tram and motor drivers, pedestrians, and traffic officers at present is the intersection of Bunny, Featherston, and Stout Streets, for here again traffic lines converge from all sorts of angles; the volume is heavy; it is the busiest pedestrian point in the city; and the closing of Waterloo Quay between Bunny and Whitmore Streets is for the time being turning waterfront traffic into Bunny Street.

The position may be relieved when this length of Waterloo Quay is reopened, but on the other hand the ramp, Aotea and Waterloo Quays will carry a much greater number of cars when this new city approach is finished and traffic bound for Lambton Quay, Bowen Street, and that part of the city will pile through the Bunny-Feathers-ton Street intersection.

The ramp-Aotea Quay-Waterloo Quay route was expected to relieve the congestion in Featherston Street, in front of the suburban entrance to the Railway Station considerably, and no doubt will do so, but it now seems probable that it will simply have the" effect of moving the congestion a chain or two to the south, to the multiple-way intersection. A new street lay-out, with islands to define traffic lines and a full light control for cars, trams, arid pedestrians, was approved by the council some time ago as a scheme desirable in the future. It seems now that the future has arrived.