STREET TRAFFIC CONTROL.

New Zealand Herald, Volume LXIII, Issue 19511, 15 December 1926, Page 12

STREET TRAFFIC CONTROL.

The Commissioner of Police could not have chosen a more inopportune time to disclaim responsibility for the control of street traffic. The Dominion has already entered the period when street traffic of all classes rises to its greatest volume, and when there are many occasions for unusual movements of traffic, outside the central thoroughfares, to and from various points of concentration. Hitherto, the police have undertaken the regulation of these extraordinary conditions, and no question has ever been raised as to the propriety of imposing such duties upon them or the efficiency with which they have been discharged. Yet within a few days of their services being required in exactly the same circumstances, the superintendent in Auckland —and presumably superintendents in other cities—has been directed to proclaim that "the control of street vehicular traffic in cities and elsewhere in the Dominion is a matter for the local authorities concerned and undertaken by the police only on express agreement and payment for such services." This communication, which is nothing less than an ultimatum, does not refer only to what is known as point duty, but is explicitly extended to "race and other emergency traffic." There is a suggestion that this repudiation of responsibility is simply a confirma-, tion of correspondence in 1911, but whatever may have been the purport of the latter, the present communication is certainly not an accurate description of the attitude and the actions of the police during the last fifteen years. A test of the validity of the commissioner's stand will be afforded by the tour of the Duke and Duchess of York. That will create "emergency traffic" conditions in every centre visited. Are the police to stand aloof unless the local authorities agree to pay whatever is demanded for their services 1 There may be very good reasons for reviewing the relative responsibilities of police and local authorities, but the Commissioner of Police is surely exceeding his rights in laying down an entirely novel conception of the subject, and demanding its acceptance by the local authorises.