DIVIDED HIGHWAY

Evening Post, Volume CXXVIII, Issue 12, 14 July 1939, Page 10

DIVIDED HIGHWAY

HUTT ROAD WIDTHS

GREATER DRIViNG SAFETY

DOUBLE TRAFFIC LANES •

I Doubts have been expressed to "The < Post" by a motorist who daily .travels I the Hutt Road whether the value o£ | the widening work is not being re-1 duced by the laying of a central kerb,] and whether the capacity of the road will really be any greater when the work is finished. I Those doubts are not well founded, said officials of the Main Highways j Board today, for each one-way lane i 'will be approximately the same width as the old bitumen pavement. i | The new formation has a minimum width of 51 feet; the dividing kerbs ■' are set four fest apart, so that the oneway roadways on ei'.her side are 23 feet 6 inches wide, whsreas the width of the o Td pnvement W2s 21 feat. The ens-way 23 fest 6 inches lanes will never have to carry mora than two vehicles abreast —as a fast car, overtakes a truck or slow car running on the outer side, or when,* under very | heavy traffic conditions, a double line |is maintained —but on the old 24-foot j pavement three-abreast driving occurred when a slow vehicle was overtaken in the face of oncoming traffic, hundreds of times every day. Outside the running tracks there are to be frequent parking spaces, 10 feet wide, on the seaward side of the new road, and there will be a number of, but less evenly-spaced parking grounds, on the landward side, so that cars which have stopped for one reason or another will pull clear of the traffic flow. Further, wherever the road is banked and fenced the width of the lanes will be increased to 25 and 26 feet in each lane, so there should be no difficulty in overtaking" anywhere on the redesigned length of. the road. STANDARD PRACTICE OVERSEAS. The single-way lanes on the new Hutt Road are wider than are recognised as standard overseas. In California, where highway practice is far advanced and is regarded as a world standard. 20ft one-way lanes are considered of ample width, but where the country is not difficult 22ft lanes are put down as the maximum necessary width. There the dividing strip is either 3ft or 20ft wide, depending on the type of highway. If there is little cross traffic a narrow strip is all that is required to keep the opposing traffic sufficiently apart to give drivers the mental margin, as well as the actual road margin, but where there are intersecting roads a 20ft division is made so that vehicles can pause out of the traffic flow until a break in the stream allows them to proceed. At the Ngahauranga junction the dividing kerbs will widen out to 20ft. so 'that cars turning into or from the gorge can wait clear of traffic flow until there is a gap in the lines of cars on the road to be taken. There will be three of these widening islands on the Hutt Road and one on the Gorge Road at the intersection. On both roads there will be breaks at frequent intervals in the dividing strips to allow cars to turn. As road formation was extraordinarily difficult in the new Ngahauranga Gorge and an extra foot of width would have meant the removal of tens of thousands of yards of rock through the length of the gorge, the dividing strip has been reduced to 2ft 6in. which will still keep opposing lines of traffic say, 4ft apart, which is about the separation that feels comfortable to the ■ average driver. i As for many years the standard highway width, for straight-ahead, passing, and overtaking traffic was 18ft, there should be ample width for oneway driving on clearly separated lanes, each over 20ft. Nothing—greater width, carefully calculated banking, division into single-way travel, and fencing of banking by crash-proof netting and cable guards—will prevent all accidents under all circumstances, but these new main highway approaches to Wellington are designed to reduce acci-dent-risk to the absolute minimum; to nil. the Main Highways Board and Transport Department officers hope, for all but drivers who should never have been loosed on public highways.