BUSY BROADWAY IS NOT A MODEL.

Star (Christchurch), Issue 17837, 4 May 1926, Page 6

BUSY BROADWAY IS NOT A MODEL.

STRESS, STRAIN AND HUSTLE—TOO MUCH DIN.

Mr C. J. M Kenzie. Acting Chief Engineer of Public Works and Acting Un-der-Secretary of that department, has brought back with him from his world tour vivid impressions of intensive transport systems and a great admiration of the technical ingenuity they involve (says the Wellington “Dominion’') ; but he is by no means certain that the concentrated conditions —of work or residence—that make these systems necessary are worth copying in any country not already committed to them.

The imagination is struck with the fact that the Woolworth Building, on Broadway. New York, is fifty-eight storeys high and accommodates about 14.000 workers, all of whom go to and fro between work place and street by a system of vertical transportation—that

is, by a series of lifts, which have to be worked on a dispatching system under a traffic captain of their own. To avoid such concentration becoming congestion, a new industry of elevator construction, with elaborations hardly dreamed of a few years ago, has been called into being. With the construction of rows of skyscrapers, streets have become walled-in lanes, and the street space itself has been invaded by rail systems—surface, underground and overhead. Even when there is no overhead railway, the overshadowing' effect of a walled-in street is oppressive. One of the New York streets (116th Street) has three tracks overhead—one of them express—a couple on the street surface, and four underground. The overhead whizzes by office windows, revealing staffs of people at work, and how they can concentrate their mental efforts amid the concentrated din of the street passes understanding. Questioned on this phase of modern city traffic—the stress and strain factor involved not merely by “hustle,’ but by the formidable noise thereof—Mr M Kenzie replied that America itself, having had experience of the skyscraper and of the concentrated traffic problem, was gravely in doubt as to the wisdom of building on such a scale. He pointed out that a new feature—whether permanent he could not say—of the many-storeyed style in United States cities was a setting back of higher storei’s, each receding more and more from the street line. This was exemplified in the magnificent new Telephone Building, in New York. The principle of limiting the height of buildings derived so much support from American experience that it could not be ignored in other countries, especially in countries where the economic conditions that tempted people to build high (as in New York) did not exist.

Sydney aims to be in more ways than one the Australian New York, and the conversation turned on the new system of underground and across-har-bour transport that is being evolved by and for Sydney’s million. In the bridge connection between Sj-dney and North Sydney millions are being invested ; millions more in the underground sj-stem that connects the bridge and railway station and which serves the city proper.

Mr M'Kenzie was impressed with the magnitude of both works. He found the station in Hyde Park section of the underground about completed, with ample accommodation and approaches. The bridge building was such a huge undertaking that it necessitated the construction of a big fabricating shop w’hich in itself covered over 1000 ft by 130 ft, and it contained special plant such as a “mangling’’ machine, capable of rolling and mangling sheets of metal 12ft w'ide and 2£in thick.

Asked whether he thought that the better use of intensive transport was to get an army of people in and out of one big building, or to spread population evenly over suburban and outer areas, Mr M’Kenzie replied that the transport engineer’s work was to solve whatever problem might be put before him. The question of avoiding certain forms of concentration, as by limiting the height of buildings, belonged to the sphere of public policy. No doubt New Zealand would be protected partly by its economic limitations and partly by the common sense and foresight of its people.