TAXIS AT FOURPENCE

Sun (Auckland), Volume III, Issue 655, 6 May 1929, Page 2

TAXIS AT FOURPENCE

PARIS TRAFFIC PROBLEMS BETTER CONTROL AT Us T From the point of view of traffic 5 two great cities are alike; each has i i special individuality, and therefor, each has its own traffic problem. 4 the one pole is Manhattan Islaj-j wherein New York, enclosed bet**,, the East River and the Hudson, hj £ been forced to sprout upwards fc.. skyscrapers, writes the ’ ManchesteGuardian.” At the other po] e ,* Tokyo which, with less than halt g, population of London, spreads with 2 little dwellings over an area greats than that of any other city in t!l( world. There are. roughly speak®, great cities that sprawl, others tha; are hounded and shut in. To each category the population test appu e< differently. Even more than New York, Paris i. an island city. What has made it a» island are its ring of fortification" created in the ’forties of the last cettury. They encircle it like a mediae val v all and moat, traversable only >• the various gates, and at these gates the stranglehold is made all the men intense by the absurd octroi system Paris, in a word, is still a walled city and within its walls dwell nearly three million people, and, what is most to the point, virtually the whole of the motor, ins class. Such a congestion, both 0; human beings and vehicles, is not to be found elsewhere. Comparing London and Paris as a whole, the French capital would come out on the average some three or four storeys higher, a fact which accounts for the barrack-like regularity of all the streets alike, and renders Paris, outside one or two main avenues, sr, extremely ugly as a city. To give full force to this vertical element it should be added that, the Paris popu. lation is pretty well entirely herded into tenements (rich and poor alike), and that save for the dark courtyards of the tenement blocks there are Tir. tually no open spaces, gardens or parks. At lunch time and at nightfall this virtually congested population pours into the streets simultaneously. These are what in Paris are called “the hours of encumbrance/* an exact phrase. At these hours the city tratlie is brought pretty well to a com. plete block. Between midday and J p.m. and between 5 p.m. and 7 p.m.no one who was not an invalid would dream of traversing central Paris in a motor-car or taxi. More and more during these hours taxi-drivers in the outskirts are refusing to take clients into the centre. The government of the city is partly to blame. Why it should object to the compact double-deck bus of tho London type and prefer the long, unwieldy, caterpillar-like single-decker, often six-wheeled, so that in making the slightest manoeuvre it blocks a whole thoroughfare, is beyond imagining. Had Paris anything like the London motor-bus service or the Manchester tramcars, life would be much easier. But why it should be so is a mystery that only tradition, prejudice and the singularity of Paris as me only great human agglomeration in France—in other words, the lack of experience—can explain. Superfluous Taxis The result is an enormous superfluity of taxis. In Paris a taxi costs only fourpence a mile. There is no extra charge for extra passengers, so that for three or four people they are even cheaper than buses. And then in a virtually walled city there are such short distances to go. No wonder that Paris has more—let it be said in justice, better—taxicabs than probably London and ail the other cities of the United Kingdom combined. No wonder, too —thanks not oniy to the taxis, but the innumerable private cars in a land where the petrol and motor-tax is so low’—that the traffic problem oi Paris is beginning to appear insoluble. Nor is the comic press guilty of excessive satire where it suggests that at certain times of the day it would save time and money both for taxidriver and client if the one could attach a taximeter to the leg of the other, accompany him on foot to his destination, and charge him accordingly. The dictator of Paris traffic is *SL Chiappe, Prefect of Police, the most energetic, innovating and miracleworking Corsican since Napoleon (incidentally, with some of his faulta). T ive years ago the traffic control here was almost comically chaotic, the joy of every English visitor; to-day it is equal, if not superior, to that of London or even of New York. No capital city can boast of such splendidly efficient "pointsmen”; few of so welldrilled a motor world, even though it be somewhat excessively at th© expense of the pedestrian. No other capital possesses so fine or so large a fleet of taxis or such skilful—too skilful and too daring—taxi-drivers.