TRAFFIC REGULATION

Southland Times, Issue 18821, 14 May 1920, Page 6

TRAFFIC REGULATION

NEW DEVICE IN MELBOURNE. SYDNEY, May 5. Although Sydney is a much bigger city than Melbourne, one has to go to the Victorian capital to see bad traffic congestion in the streets (says the correspondent of the Christchurch Press). Melbourne, so carefully planned, is laid out in precise squares, and at the corners of the busiest squares the street-crossings are nightmares. The corner of Collins and Stvanston streets on a busy afternoon is a shrieking inferno. The police first stop the flow along Collins street while the pressure eases off in Swanston street, and then Swanston street is held up while the bankcd-up masses in Collins street rush away. There is nothing so bad as that in Sydney—although Victorians everlastingly reproach Sydney with its haphazard and unplanned growth. Sydney is not jammed up against a river, and the traffic can get away through innumerable bypaths. Certainly the traffic has to bo regulated at a score of busy corners, but it is a steady, regular flow, and not a series of spasmodic, overwhelming rushes like it is in Melbourne, where the lines of traffic, crossing at right angles in three or four places right in the heart of the city, cause such confusion. No one envies the Melbourne traffic policeman his job; he has to be a man of cool, clear head and no nerves. But now they propose to put a mechanical device in his place. Right at the intersection of Collins and Swanston streets there is now suspended from wire ropes, attached to the buildings, a huge arrow arrangement. When Collins street is clear the arrow points up and down Collins street, while a large red sign ‘‘Stop!” is shown to the traffic in Swanston street. Two or three minutes, and then the signs are reversed, and the traffic in Collins street must “stop.” The signs are worked by an official high up on one of the corner buildings—but while the apparatus is being tested the traffic policeman remains in his old place, right in the centre of the intersection. It is claimed for the new system that it Is easier on the traffic controller, and more efficient, no one can miss* the big sign, whereas frequently ' the traffic policeman was hidden in the surging mass of vehicles, and his guiding hand could not be seen. The sign system is an invention of a firm of Sydney engineers. It is already in operation in San Francisco, and it is hoped to introduce it to most of the cities of Australia and New Zealand.