THE STREETS OF PARIS

Evening Post, Volume CVII, Issue 16, 19 January 1924, Page 16

THE STREETS OF PARIS

.SAFETY'OF PEDESTRIANS.

Pedestrians in Paris . hate received wit Usa #uly Parisian blend of raillery and resignation the announcement that tie Prefecture of Police is about to teach them how to move about in their city without-being run over. This step was decided .upon at % recent meeting of the Permanent Consultative Traffic Com-' miUee, which authorised the wholesale diEtribution of a pedestrian's manual, filled with sage.counsel on how to .cross a road, alight from an omnibus,''etc. In order that the official advice may be better impressed upon the,. public mind, the, booklet, is being illustrated .with humorous drawings of the kind of incidents pedestrians may expect if they disregard, the Prefecture's warnings. There is a hint that the authorities have some sympathy with the point of view of drivers of vahicles who, whenever a pedestrian is run down, consider themselves the most aggrieved parties, for the Irafnc Committee states that after this booklet has been distributed pedestrians will have no excuse if they get themselves killed or injnred. But as a counterpoise to this determination of the j authorities to discourage the pedestrians' ! habit of getting in the way of traffic, they are also about to make it a- little' easier-to cross roads by a new. system'! of electee signals, which will from time to time Hold-up the stream of traffiq along the main' arteries. An c:xperi-_ ment is to be made, for instance, along the Grands Boulevards with a series of signals, set at intervals of a few score yards, a, whole series'of which will be operated by the turning of one switch, inus, at a given moment, all side streets leading on to tho boulevard will be- closed (simultaneously for a distance of, perhaps, a third of a mile, after which traffic on the boulevard itself will be arrasted to allow all cross-currents to pass over. This, system is reported to have proved very successful in New York. Another proposal is that the trailers of tramway cars should be abolished, at any rate in the central portions of thu tramway system. What is to be done for those wljo crowd these trailers in the rush hours is not indicated. They cannot go into the Underground railway or lhto omnibuses, for the reason that both are already crowded to the limit of human capacity for packing itself into a minimum of space; but perhaps, if they study their pedestrians'' manuals carefully, Parisians may find it safe at last to walk.