GREAT HIGHWAYS.

Manawatu Standard, Volume LVIII, Issue 42, 18 January 1938, Page 8

GREAT HIGHWAYS.

TRAFFIC IN GERMANY. HIGH SPEEDS ATTAINED. Favourable impressions of the pre-sent-day conditions in Germany, and of the treatment of English visitors to that country, were gained by Mr S. N. B. Wynne, who returned to Christchurch lust week after a seven months’ tour abroad. The hulk of the people in Germany, declared Mr AVynne, were very happy and hard-working. Although there were several different factions at work in Germany, the masses were in wholehearted support of Herr Hitler, whom they regarded as their saviour, Mr AVynne was especially interested in the. many hundreds of miles of Autobahn, or arterial concrete roads, which are now so famous in Germany. These roads, he said, eliminated all causes of accidents. They were wide, with enough room for two cars to travel abreast, and were for one-way traffic only, the road for cars going in the opposition direction being about 25 yards away. These roads, he said, did not pass through any villages, there being viaducts and crossings so. designed that there was no intersecting traffic. This enabled cars to maintain great speeds, there being no limit. . “They are really the most marvellous roads I have ever seen,” said. Mr AVvnne, who added that he understood Hitler had a 25-year plan ahead for the continued building of similar roads. Although great speeds were attained, it being common to travel along these roads at 70 miles an hour, there were comparatively few accidents. German motorists were very law-abiding, adhering rigidly to the rules of the road. BETTER THAN AMERICAN. These arterial roads, said Mr Wynne, were better than the giant roads in Los Angeles, where roads had four lines of traffic travelling in each direction, making them eight-way roads. One particularly striking feature, when motoring and travelling by train through Germany, remarked Mr AVynne, was the intensive cultivation. From the border to Berlin, some hundreds of miles, the fields were scrupulously neat and tidy. Along the railway line, instead of the 20 yards of waste land on either side, as so often seen in New Zealand, there would be crops, cultivated close to the lines themselves. It appeared to him, added Mr Wynne, that women did most of the cultivation, groups of a dozen or so frequently being seen at work in the fields.