THE BUSIEST SPOTS.

Stratford Evening Post, Volume XXXIV, Issue 28, 26 September 1912, Page 5

THE BUSIEST SPOTS.

There never was a town so nobly planned that traffic could not mass itself in certain streets. And by some curious civic rule, these are not usually the finest and broadest streets. Even when provided with a majestic modern thoroughfare, the townsman is still not to be beguiled from taking the narrow way, though its inconvenience may have been abused for generations. A novel article in the Strand gives some account of this tendency, as well as quoting some remarkable figures concerning street traffic in many lands. The most crowded place ill the world, for five and a half days of the week, is about an acre of London City, bounded by the Royal Exchange, the Bank, and the Mansion House. Each day 500,000 people pass and repass, together with 50,000 vehicles. The result of a traffic census taken outside tho Mansion House showed that on an average day some 30,000 vehicles pass this one particular corner, whale its pedestrian traffic is well over 250,000. Piccad'lly Circus is another busy spot, and there are very large figures for Hyde Park Comer! The Unter den Linden, the noblest thoroughfare of Berlin, is world-famous, but the traffic calculator finds his big numbers in the Friedrich-Strasse, considerably less than half as wide. Here the world and his wife go by at the rate of 30,000 pedestrians an hour, and the total for the day amounts to some 300,000. The busiest centre in Pai'is is in front of the Opera House, traversed by 63,000 vehicles and 450,000 pedestrians daily. Japan has her O-dori Street in Tokio, so extremely narrow that it means fairly close squeezing for the 300,000 persons who pass here in a day. But Madrid's busiest spot, the Puerto del Sol, although it is the junction of no fewer than ten main streets, is itself so capacious that the daily average of 350,000 persons distribute themselves so well that they hardly realise they are a crowd at all. As for New York, the boast of Broadway is that "00,000 people pass each day its junction with Herald Square, hut London still counts pre-eminence, for this includes passengers by tramcars, foot passengers only being well below the Mansion House record. And Chicago stands next to New York in glory, possessing a. "human ganglion"' in State Street, where nearly 400,000 people pass and repass on foot during the day.