INCREASE OF MOTORS.

Hawera Star, Volume XLVI, 17 April 1926, Page 13

INCREASE OF MOTORS.

SYDNEY TRAFFIC DANGERS. There is something of a taxi war in Sydney just now, and as it is one of those few occasions when the public can afford to look cheerful, as tar as their pockets are. concerned, they are viewing with interest the fortunes of the various companies. The taxis in the city streets are of almost all the rainbow’s colours. You have your choice of Yellow cabs, Black and White cabs," Checker cabs and other, cabs, while before long Blue cabs and Green calls threaten to give more splashes of colour- to the crowded city. This, of course, is apart from the taxis of all sorts of distinctive colours run bv private owners, who must be feeling keenly the extraordinary incursion of cabs controlled by big and wealthy companies, especially as not a few of the “small” men have probably bought their cars on time payment. The few hansom-cab drivers who still linger about the streets cut lonely figures. The old days when they were the aristocracy of the transport service are gone.

It is estimated that one person in every 23 in New South Wales owns a motor-car or other motor-vehicle. To see Pitt Street at night in the neighbourhood of the theatres, with motorcars of every, hue flanking that nariow thoroughfare for the entire length of several blocks, would leave the impression that not merely one person in every 23, but everybody in the place owns a motor. Before very long Sydney pedestrians will want to be many-legged to escape safely the evergrowing stream of motor traffic in their narrow citv streets. To-day, as the number-plates show, there are cars exceeding 100,000 The Traffic Department is issuing identification numbers at the rate of from 700 to 800 a week. This applies only to ordinary private cars and excludes motor-lorries and taxi-cabs.

Incidentally, with the increasing traffic the police, especially the new torment for motorists known as the “flying night patrol,” are exercising greater vigilance. On one dav alone recently 145 drivers charged with various traffic offences appeared at the Police Court; on another day .... the magistrate had - to cope with a rush of more than 200 cases. Motorists who, like Phaeton, do not know how to drive their chariots are'experiencing a bad time in Sydney just now.