WALK TO THE LEFT

Evening Post, Volume CXXXVIII, Issue 135, 5 December 1944, Page 6

WALK TO THE LEFT

A FOOTPATH CAMPAIGN

Footpath > traffic in the shopping streets has been getting along for a j long time by the rules of the great Raft'erty. Pedestrian collisions are only most infrequently fatal or even seriously damaging, so not much has been done about it, particularly as the traffic branch- of the City Engineer's Department is understaffed with so many men away on service. The Americans, too, carrie in for their small share of blame for footpath chaos, because they walked to the right, but there was not so much in that—Wellington never did have very marked footpath traffic behaviour, not even when, some years ago, a special pedestrian constable tried for months to get some uniformity into city walking. At that time Wellington had a: bylaw about it, "Keep to the Left," but when the bylaws were consolidated that clause was somehow left out, arid nobody noticed it until the Automobile Association recently raised the point of pedestrians step Ding carelessly. from path to roadway. Now a footpath campaign has -been started, with new notices, '"Walk to the Left/ white lines on the shopping street paths, and with words of advice by traffic inspectors and police, in the hope th.at. some sort of order will be obtained before the real press of Christmas shopping. The white lmes were this morning- noticeably effective and probably good will come of it, at any rate until the novelty wears off, and if by that time the advantages of common-sense walking to the left are clear enough perhaps the rule .will stick, bylaw or no oylaw. Some people have remarked upon _ the extraordinary prominence oi" the lines—where they are most

While they are at it the traffic inspectors will do something about nonobservance of pedestrian crossings and about jay-walking, for both faults have become very obvious in the last hevY-u mont£ s- ,Ther(r are hard an<* **s bylaws about marked crossings and careless road crossing and prosecut n r f°L **?"*** infringement may be confidently expected. Car parking ths al i S! O -be ?, lyeS the °nce-over7so mere is an interesting and importSi« £°£niS^ d crossing; is a crossing mat is marked over part of the road! s^fT^nt- c i?SI