DEATH TRAPS.

Gisborne Times, Volume LXVI, Issue 10473, 31 December 1927, Page 4

DEATH TRAPS.

SYDNEY’S TRAFFIC DANGERS “LET BE” POLICY.

One of the amazing things about Sydney, a vast) city which is becoming more and more overcrowded every day, is the Jaissez faire policy of +he authorities towards its traffic problems. There is no Jack of town planning and kindred organisations, which emerge at.intervals with some ambitious proposal or the other to try to meet the situation. Rut nothing in a really big way ever seems to be attempted. If the position is allowed to remain as it is tor, say, another Jive or ten years, the city of Sydney will be an unsafe piace even for the most hardened and wary of its citizens to move about in. Two of its most notorious death traps are what is known as St. James’ Square, where half-a-dozen tides of heavy traffic have their confluence at all hours, of the day and night, and the Central Railway Square, where again, there is a ceaseless whirl of motor-cars, buses, taxis, trams and pedestrians. The position is the same in several other quarters of the city. It is, of course, the pedestrian who is caught in this maelstrom of traffic who surfers. Unlike Argus, the unfortunate citizen has only. two eyes;»he cannot look before and behind him, and to the right and left- simultaneously. A section of the press has raised another..Kowl about all these deathtraps, and the fact that the authorities appear to have gone soundly to sleep over the question of meeting effectively the present and future problems of the metropolis of Australia. When trams were introduced in Sydney a learned Judge laid down the law that the pedestrian had tile first right to .the road. Let a' pedestrian try, to' vindicate that- right to-day. Any compensation arising out of his death, 'especially after the lawyers have -had their cuts will be poor consolation to those he leaves behind.