TRAFFIC TO RONGOTAI

Evening Post, Volume CXXVIII, Issue 1, 1 July 1939, Page 10

TRAFFIC TO RONGOTAI

VIEW OF TAXI MANAGER

FERRIES ONLY WAY

OUT

The. proposal'that. tram,. bus, and private car transport during the Exhibition period should be augmented by a ferry service between the city, Hutt Valley, and Evans Bay was given unqualified support by the manager of one of the largest taxi-cab services in Wellington in conversation with a "Post" reporter today. Taxi operators, he said, might be expected to be looking forward to. big afternoons and nights at Rongotai as a coming harvest time, but they were not. There would naturally be more taxi business in the city, between trains and boats and hotels and boardinghouses, but night taxi-running to and from Rongotai would be almost, impossible in the busiest hours on account of extreme road congestion. "There are three ways and three frays only in which you can transport great crowds of people quickly and in decent comfort," he said. "They can walk, if the distance is not too great; they can go by train, if there are trains; or they can go by boat. The city trams arid buses are crowded enough each evening with ordinary suburban traffic, and cars never have and never will make any sort of a job of transporting big crowds, particularly over such routes as those to Rongotai.** ROAD FIGURES FAR TOO HIGH. While agreeing with most points made in the articles in,"The Post," he said, he disagreed entirely with the estimates of the car and bus capacity of the various roads. A total flow of 5000 vehicles an hour had been suggested for the Evans ; Bay Road. He doubted whether, even if a double line of cars could be maintained throughout, half' that number of cars could pass along Evans Bay Road, bottled at either end and slowed down by. a succession of bends and curves that should have been straightened as part of the road improvement, at any rate on the.sharpest bends. Also, he did noif think that the average would work out at anything like 3.5 persons to a car. , ("The Post's" estimates were purposely kept high to show that, even on that far too generous basis transport would present a problem so serious that unusual steps would have to be taken.)

"If you cut your figures down to half you will be. nearer the mark," he said.

The probable speed round Evans Bay, he thought, after discussing the whole problem with his own drivers and with transport officers, could not be any better than 10 miles an hour, even if there were clear v runs and no interruptions of flow at either end.

That was the opinion of men who earned their living driving cars, and the people who would crowd round Evans Bay, through the tunnel, and over Constable Street, bothered bytrams and delays^ would not all be such expert drivers, and many of them would not know the roads.

"To talk about parking space for ten and fourteen thousand cars at and about the Exhibition and to rely /Upon private car transport as anything like a sufficient factor to make up for the inability of trams to carry sufficient numbers is, to my mind, just silly. Even with the 'most complete and expert traffic guidance possible,

ten thousand cars cannot be got away from Rongotai, at night in less than three or four hours.

"What amazes me," he said, "is that the City Council and the Exhibition authorities fail to realise, what a patch of trouble is ahead unless they get down to a plan in which ferry-boats will deliver their passengers within walking distance of the Exhibition. The ostrich attitude that there the Exhibition is and there the trams and roads are is not going to get over the transport jam. A substantial ferry service, even.if it loses money in itself, is the only way out of it."

Individual drivers interviewed said that they fully agreed that there would be nothing in night running to Rongotai, for with the fares which could be charged and the time occupied in getting out and the stilllonger time in getting back along congested roads they would be out of pocket on every run.

"If the council has any sympathy with the taxi trade," said one driver, "the kindest thing they can do is to pass a by-law prohibiting taxi runs to Rongotai between seven and eight at night..,. We don't want business at four shilling fares and ten shilling times." ■. .