Congested Parking in Sydney Streets

Sun (Auckland), Volume I, Issue 266, 31 January 1928, Page 7

Congested Parking in Sydney Streets

Private Enterprise May Find Solution With more than 120,000 cars registered in New South Wales at the present time, and of that number nearly half owned and driven in Sydney and suburbs, the traffic problem has attained to that position where it is at once a nightmare to the traffic authorities, and a series of bad dreams to the motorist, says the Sydney “Daily Guardian.” Parking spac£ is at such a premium in the city that the authorities frankly look to private enterprise to solve their difficulties. t The day is not now very far distant when the big city retail houses will have to provide parking space where their ground floor stands now, if they are to accommodate their customers in a place reasonably near the store. Cars are cheap now compared to a few years ago, and they are still dropping in price, so that it is not unreasonable to expect that another five years will find almost double the number in use at present. 1 What conditions will be like then for the city motorist is a subject that one shudders to contemplate. Even now police, to facilitate traffic have had to prphibit parking in some streets altogether. Others have the partial parking ban, and many of the latter 'will soon come under the total exclusion of parking rules. The Jay-Walkers Pedestrian traffic, as well as the motorists, is being regulated'"by police, and a determined effort is being made to eliminate all jay-walking. This will become punishable if regulations now under consideration are brought into effect. Tramcars, of course, add to the city congestion, and with the increase in population, in motor-cars and other similar vehicles, the position is becoming desperate. Supt. Turbet, head of the Traffic Branch, makes no bones about the matter. Private enterprise must come to the rescue, for the police cannot ,go beyond a certain point. Their job is to regulate and direct, not to accommodate. He hopes for that bright day when there will be many parking stations on the ramp system, and a traffic policeman will be wasting his time looking for motorists parked in prohibited areas. Before that day dawns, however, those who ought to know consider that things will have reached such a. pass that the average motorist will have to drive back home to park his car in comfort.