The Christchurch Star. SATURDAY, JANUARY 4, 1930. NEGLECTING MODERN PROBLEMS.

Star (Christchurch), Issue 18959, 4 January 1930, Page 8

The Christchurch Star. SATURDAY, JANUARY 4, 1930. NEGLECTING MODERN PROBLEMS.

COMPLAINTS HAVE BEEN RENEWED in Christchurch regarding the shocking state of the roadway in Colombo Street south, and one is bound to say that the roading policy of the City Council, having regard to the spending authorities that have been granted, appears to be lamentably slow and unsatisfactory. At a time when the public are faced with a complete revolution in the art of transport, and when everybody is becoming a motorist, there is an urgent need for the modernising of the roads on which the motor vehicle of the present day and the future is to travel. As a matter of fact, the revolution is so complete, and fast trallic is developing so continuously, that authorities on transport consider that to allow the pedestrian of the future to share a road with fast traffic will be as foolish as to allow the traditional cow to share the railway track with locomotives. We are perhaps a long way from that era in Christchurch, but such problems as the division of roads into separate tracks for vehicles of different speeds must be faced, because slow traffic will not die out. The United States has one motorcar to every five persons, and Detroit has a car for every three and a half persons, and as New Zealand will always hold a foremost place in these statistics owing to the high per capita wealth of the people, we will have to move with the times, or even ahead of the times. What roads will be like in fifty years’ time is a matter for speculation. It is highly probable that cross-roads will be practically eliminated by the provision of different levels, although this is not likely to occur in cities, but in the meantime it is false economy, whatever the future may hold, to put up with corduroy roads such as those on which Christchurch motorcars shake themselves loose.

PARK RAILINGS AGAIN. TT IS A CURIOUS coincidence that when Christchurch was discussing the removal of park railings recently an identical argument was proceeding in London. It was precipitated by a childish remark on the part of Mr Lansbury, the father of London parks, who is First Commissioner of Works. “ I think,” he declared, “ that if God had intended us to have railings round parks and open spaces He would have grown them.” Such an assertion, of course, was too foolish to need comment, but the growing desire and the actual accomplishment of the gradual removal of iron- railings from enclosed spaces has a distinct aesthetic value and ought not to be hindered. On this score there is even something to be said for the abolition of the front fences round our houses; but here the question of privacy operates, and in New Zealand the idea has not been adopted. It may yet come as it has in America and turn our city residential streets into garden boulevards. Rut there is no real reason why it is necessary to rail in a park, except perhaps to remind us that it is a park. Indeed, the freer the access the more it serves the purpose of a park.

A LONE-HAND EXPLORER. ' 1 MI ERE IS SOMETHING likeably laconic in Sir Hubert Wilkins’s messages from the Antarctic. He has added three hundred miles to the world’s known coastline, and has discovered that Charcot Land is an island. These discoveries, of course, are merely a continuation of the valuable work he has been carrying out on this and earlier flying expeditions from Deception Island. The possibilities of exploration by air are, indeed, almost limitless compared with the old days, and the sum of human knowledge regarding the Polar regions is being added to at such a rate that maybe in a few years’ time the whole of the Polar caps will have been charted with remarkable accuracy. Without blowing cold on the value of Byrd’s work, which is a logical and valuable continuation of exploration by British parties, one is bound to say that Wilkins’s exploits have a charm of their own. If ever a man played a lone hand in exploration Wilkins has done so. When he flew over the North Pole with one companion he left no possible doubt as to where he had been, because he took off on one side of the world and landed on the other. In connection with Polar exploration it is significant of the growing demand for accuracy and unchallengeable proof that an American Writer, Mr J. Gordon Hayes, <n authority on the subject, has just published a book which sets out to prove that Peary could not have reached the North Pole, and although this book has been received with undiluted scorn in certain quarters, it' must be remembered that Amundsen himself declared that Peary had brought back no more proofs than Cook that he had reached the North Pole. What one is inclined to overlook in connection with Cook and Peary is that the task they set themselves was ippallingly difficult, and their memory should be respected for the risks they undertook in the interests of knowledge and science. To-day the rewards seem to be greater, but Ihe risks are less.