TRAFFIC CONTROL.

New Zealand Herald, Volume LXI, Issue 18772, 28 July 1924, Page 5

TRAFFIC CONTROL.

Sir,—-Your correspondent, ''HVTiite And Blue," in his criticism on the traffic men- " agement at Eden Park, *hit a tritb when ha said Police Department should send a man'abroad >to study traffia control. -, If anybody should go: abroad ifc. certainly should be the experienced traffic policeman. Sir James Gunson wpt to America and cawo back with the. Mifety zone idea—a thing which every ■ traffic policeman ridiculed. The beads of the department may agree with it, but they don't know anything about it. If a mail experienced in controlling traffic went "abroad, he would be able to t«U just what road* everything run smoothly. The by-law compeUing motor-cai-s to atop behind stationary trsaacars, was much the better idea, and operated splendidly in Wellington. But it is doubtful if anybody going abroad could lewn anythiag that would prove a solution to Auckland's traffic iproblema, In. moot other cities two-way traffic is the rule rather than the exception, but at Wellesley Street, for instance, it is possibi.) for road traffic to go in 16 different directions, and tramcars can, and do, between 4.30 and 5.15 p.m., go in 10 directions. Nevertheless one solitary policeman has to do all this on his own. I have worked it, and seen it worked to perfection by a system ot arm signals taught ua is /Wellington by an ex-London metropolitan policeman, and adapted to local use. These signals, clear and obvious to coinmonsanse folk, were never given ft try-out here, and no' policeman, to my knowledge, was even asked how -he thought/traffic ought: to be worked. One council official did once ask me if I thought the people could be got to wait their turn in queues. Then ht\ asked me why I laughed. "They do if; In London," he said. '"No doubt they do," said I, "but the phlegmatic English are not the alert Aucklanders, 3nd, moreover, they have 9800 policemen in lbs metropolitan area oj London to snake them do it. There is not one thousand policemen in all New Zealand " » V : . Ex-JOHN.