CONTROL OF STREET TRAFFIC

New Zealand Herald, Volume L, Issue 15269, 5 April 1913, Page 6

CONTROL OF STREET TRAFFIC

An improvement in the control of street traffic in Auckland should result from the City Council's latest overture' to the Police Department. The Council offers an annual payment of £500 to the Police Department in return for which it asks to be relieved by the police force of all responsibility connected with the control of street traffic. The change is just being made in Wellington, but it can in no sense be regarded as in the nature of 4 an experiment, and the .Police Department need have no hesitation in at once accepting the Auckland City Council's offer and clothing the police force

with Jull authority on the streets-of Auckland. The control of city traffia falls -naturally, among the duties. of a police force. Tn older countries where each' city organises and pays its own; 4 police force no other system is thought of j the police are the servants of the municipality and as such they control the city traffic. In New Zealand the police are paid by the State and nominally the street-traffic in AuckcontroUed; bythe City Council's traffic inspector, although actually, as every citizen knows, the inspector would, be helpless without the aid which is daily given by the police. .Dual control is undesirable and it is also undesirable that any encouragement should be given to the. centralisation of t authority and the curtailment of the; powers of local governing bodies, but the control of street traffic by the local authority in a large and busy city is impossible without an adequate staff and while the ; police are on the streets there is no real.need; for such a staff. Either the police have to take over the street traffic, in Auckland or the municipality has to take over the police:, and in present circumstances the City Council has wisely chosen the former course.