MAIN STREET TRAFFIC.

Waikato Times, Volume 121, Issue 20230, 26 June 1937, Page 9

MAIN STREET TRAFFIC.

(To the Editor.) Sir, —A local in your issue yesterday informed readers that Traffic Inspector Nicholson’s estimate of the average speed of motors in Victoria Street was 15 miles per hour. He also suggested that half the drivers were poor drivers, and not experienced enough to negotiate congested traffic. Well, I beg to differ from Mr Nicholson. As a motorist constantly using Victoria Street, my opinion Is that the cyclists are the cause of the slow pace. No careful motorist will take the risk of passing three or four cyclists riding abreast and forcing him over to I he wrong side of the road, where if anything In the way of an accident occurs it throws him unquestionably in the wrong. He Just tootles along behind them at about 10 miles per hour. Even when a single cyclist is going down the street he Is more often than not within a few feet of lhe road centre, and, with a great many, a blast of the horn has no effect. I would like to offer a suggestion to the effect that cyclists be kept off the centre of the road altogether. This could be done by having a white line painted down both sides of the street four feet from the kerb, that four feet. Of course, the traffic inspectors would have lo jump good and hard on any motor parked overhanging that line. I know objectors will immediately exclaim that thereby the width between cars parked on each side of the street would be narrowed by eight feet. Just so, but if a cyclist is in Hie middle and riding eight feet out from the tail of parked cars, you are siill losing eight, feet of the road to motor traffic, and if another cyclist on the opposite side of the road happens lo be doing I he same thing you are losing sixteen feel of the road. 'lf this scheme be not feasible, then at least lei. tho council pass a by-law —and, moreover, rigidly enforce it—that no two cjlsists are to ride abreast.

That done, I feel sure the average of speed would rise, thus easing congestion. We have the words of Mr Justice Fair that “cyclists do the most unexpected things at times and they are the most difficult users of the road to cope with,” so I will close by saying that I think the slowness of travel through Victoria Street is caused by the cyclists, and not by the incompetency of the drivers, but rather to their carefulness.—l am, etc., MOTORIST. Hamilton, June 24.