LONDON TRAFFIC

Hokitika Guardian, 29 May 1926, Page 1

LONDON TRAFFIC

AN aaiertcan appreciation. LONDON, April 13. “Your pavements are the most perfect in the world. IT icy must be bad for tlie boot industry. What a lot of policemen you hire! London is the most orderly city we have so far visited.” The above are samples of the iomments made yesterday by Air Frank .J. Carr, Deputy Chief Constable of Buffalo, United States, who, with the mayor of the same city, Air Frank 11. Schwab, is on a visit to London to inspect the traflic airangoments. Accompanied by a reporter, they made- a tour by motor-ear through the more important AYest End thoroughfares yesterday, and, coming from a town when traffic is controlled by automatic signals and where 90 per cent of the population .own their own cars, their views on London traffic control are original and interestiugfl Air Carr said:— “Considering what you are ,up against, your traffic flow is simply (marvellous. It-’is all very well to talk about automatic traffic signals, but if you had our system in London ym would want millions’of them.:’ To look at this great square (Hyde Park Corner), with its mass of tributary streets, and to see all the traffic moving in an orderly way all in the same direction and without any hitch or fuss is a fine spectacle. AYe have nothing to beat that.” “The best advertisement of the orderliness of your London traffic is the cars themselves. Not one in 20 has a buffer or fender to protect its wings. Every ear in the States has this device. If it did not some of the cars would be sorry spectacles.” “What respect your drivers pay to tlio arm of the policeman! Everything seems to be done in silence. Up goes the policeman’s arm and everything in sight stops—and no back-chat anywhere.” “But I cannot understand why they are not dressed in white. They must be hard to see in' the dark.”