GROWING TRAFFIC.

New Zealand Herald, Volume L, Issue 15326, 12 June 1913, Page 6

GROWING TRAFFIC.

The traffic inspector's report, showing the great increase in the number of vehicular licenses in Auckland, emphasises the need for the permanent paving of the main streets, and for the adoption of an effective system of traffic control. Streetlaying methods that were good enough for early Auckland have ceased to be even tolerable. The City Council has started to lay down main streets in wood blocks or asphalt. The condition of some of our leading streets to-day is clear evidence that the work might have been undertaken earlier with advantage to the city. City Councillors are notoriously slow to face expenditure which can possibly be deferred, and patchwork methods were continued in Auckland for much longer than was either economical or desirable. The growth of traffic compelled the forward step which promises in time to give Auckland streets worthy of the city and capable of carrying the city's traffic. Now that a start has been made' the Council need have no hesitation in pushing the work forward as rapidly as possible, and in accepting as a guiding principle in its roadmaking policy the suggestion of the Mayor that macadam should no longer be considered serviceable for any but secondary and residential streets. In the matter of traffic control the City Council is in the hands of the Department of Justice, which has so far declined to accept the very fair terms offered for control of street traffic by the police which offers the only solution of the difficulty likely to be satisfactory.