CONGESTION OF TRAFFIC.

New Zealand Herald, Volume LXVI, Issue 20372, 28 September 1929, Page 14

CONGESTION OF TRAFFIC.

A REMEDY IN PARIS. ELEVATING THE PEDESTRIAN. The latest remedy proposed for the congestion of traffic in the narrow and tortuous old streets of Paris which run into the wide and modern avenues and boulevards is to suppress the pavement, or, as the Americans more correctly say, the sidewalk The idea is not at the same time to suppress pedestrians, but to send them one floor higher tip.

The trottoir on each side of the street would be a continuous balcony. In connection with this proposal, it is recalled that the trottoir itself is hardly more than a hundred years old. The first ones were lairl in 1825, and the reform was by no means popular at the time. The surprising thing is that it was tho women who resisted most fiercely.

Tho reason, says a correspondent, was that walking on tiptoe, which was necessary in order to pick a way through the filth of the street, reduced tho ankles and developed the calves, and the ladies were no more desirous of abandoning the practice than they have ever since the eighteenth century been of ceasing to wear Louis XV. heels. For Louis XV. heels were believed —and presumably still are—to have the same effect on the muscular development.