A REAL TRAFFIC PROBLEM

Evening Post, Volume CXII, Issue 35, 10 August 1936, Page 8

A REAL TRAFFIC PROBLEM

London's traffic problem is not new. It antedates even the motoring era, but the rapid increase in fastmoving vehicles on the road in Britain is bound to be reflected in the central areas of great cities and intensify earlier difficulties. Thus special regulations become necessary, if traffic is to be kept moving at all in certain streets, and extensions of this process of control are inevitable. In central London, according to an Official Wireless message today, the Ministry of Transport's efforts to reduce traffic congestion have been carried a stage further by the inclusion of more streets where slow-moving traffic will be banned during the busy hours. Wellington's problem, though also due to the continued increase in the number of vehicles in use, differs from that of British cities in important respects. There does not appear to be much "slow-moving traffic" in the city und horse-drawn vehicles and hand-carls are comparatively rare. On the other hand, stationary vehicles lake up so much space in streets none too wide at the outset that there is insufficient room for moving traffic in such of the thoroughfare as is left. This has the undoubted effect of slowing up the pace' and promoting congestion, besides adding lo drivers' troubles in the endeavour to avoid collisions. The problem in the city is thus peculiarly a parking problem. How it is to be solved without stultifying the advance in motor transport may well puzzle the traffic authorities. The success achieved in another direction by the automatic control of moving traffic encourages the hope that the parking, problem [ may also respond lo considered treatment.