MOTOR TRAFFIC

Te Awamutu Courier, Volume 73, Issue 6284, 23 September 1946, Page 4

MOTOR TRAFFIC

SPECIAL HIGHWAYS BEING SURVEYED In the interests of safe and economic transport, highways solely for the use of motor vehicles are being surveyed and designed in localities where the need is most urgent, stated the Minister of Public Works, Mr Semple, in the annual Public Works statement presented in the House of Representatives last week. At the outbreak of war, he said, studies were being made of design problems affecting the routes in the yicinity of urban areas where conditions were becoming serious because of congestion and the wide variety of traffic involved. It’was recognised that traditional reading methods would not offer a satisfactory solution, but that consideration would have to be given to some adaptation of the divided highway Which had secured world recognition through the effective results obtained in older and more developed countries.

Where traffic densities were not even as great as those of New Zea- . land’s more important national ■*roads, there must be segregation of motor vehicles from other forms of traffic, and while the all-purpose loads would remain for property access, for pedestrians, cyclists,stock, and for local and inter-village motor traffic, there should, in some casqp, be motorways solely for the use of motor vehicles- These would by-pass towns and built-up areas, and would traverse the country without ribbon development. Turnouts from and entrances to the motorways would be limited to selected points where the layout of the junctions would incorporate the safety principles recognised by highway engineers. The motorway would traverse the country in the manner of a railway with no ribbon, development, and with no access except at properly designed junction stations. At the same time, all-purpose and inter-village roads would receive due attention, and the highways farther afield, where traffic densities did not justify motorways, would continue to be developed along lines of safety and economy of transport for both passengers and goods. Mr Semple said that as far as the main highways generally were concerned extra graders and other machinery had recently become available. It was hoped’that by the end of the coming paving season there would be considerable improve in highway surfaces.