Traffic Paralysis

Sun (Auckland), Volume II, Issue 316, 29 March 1928, Page 10

Traffic Paralysis

AUCKLAND’S CHOKED OUTLETS Problems of Motoring Era SCORES of motorists, maintaining an even pressure at the city traffic office as they apply for their 1928 driving licences, provide evidence of the manner in which motor transport and its problems are developing year by year. It is estimated that 15,000 driving tickets will be issued this year by the Auckland City Council alone. Were all these* drivers to take to the road at once, the traffic system of the city would be paralysed.

THE folly of the motorist’s inevitable procrastination is illustrated by the last-minute policy of those applying for new licences and their 1928 registrations. Though all drivers must be able to show 1928 licences by next week, this morning only 6,000 out of the expected 15,000 had been issued. As the week wears on the traffic office will be dealing with more and more applications. Cars fitted with the 1928 numberplates, in a tasteful combination of brown and white, are now about the

streets in fair numbers. Traffic policemen approve of the colour scheme, because it offers much better visibility that the past year’s yellow and black combination, which helped many motorists, in twilight or dust, to escape the consequences of speed or recklessness. But, though they welcome this year’s plate as an improvement, traffic officers still contend that black on white, alternating with white on black, is the only satisfactory arrangement of lettering and background. INCREASING PRESSURE Decisions on these points, and the momentous question of sorting out the pinks and purples from the tints remaining for future years, are matters for the higher Government authorities, but in Auckland the traffic police and motoring authorities have equally pressing local problems to absorb their attention.

Parking, point duty, and the provision of further traffic outlets are matters on which important decisions will have to be reached soon. Nowhere in New Zealand is traffic congestion so acute as it is now in Queen Street and Symonds Street. Only the excellent work of a highly efficient and admirably organised traffic corps keeps the currents moving without a glut. Traffic officers are maintained on certain corners throughout the business hours, and at other points they are stationed whenever spare men are available. Such a crossing is the Customs Street-Albert Street corner, where on one side there is a very complicating high-level and low-level approach. Another corner where men are stationed only at intervals is the Ponsonby Reservoir corner. The Three Lamps crossing, Ponsonby, sometimes looks as though control is needed, but generally it gives little trouble. The flow of traffic in the city streets is subject to curiously erratic movements, and a heavy volume sometimes develops quickly, without any apparent reason. Auckland's problems are likely to be accentuated through the removal of the railway station to Beach Road. Traffic in that direction is already heavy, and its increase when the station becomes a new traffic centre will be manifold and perplexing. One result may be that much more traffic will go to the suburbs through Parnell, or to Newmarket via Grafton Road and Khyber Pass. Grafton Road, however, is not directly connected with Beach Road, and the new road formation recently undertaken there does not, unfortunately, offer the direct link that is so obviously desirable. FACTS ABOUT AYR STREET Ayr Street, connecting Parnell with the road skirting Hobson Bay, is another thoroughfare that has not measured up to its requirements as a new traffic outlet. Too steep and tortuous to attract the everyday motorist, its form has been severely criticised by the Auckland Automobile Association. Newmarket, with its celebrated “bottleneck,” is the centre of one of Auckland’s most acute traffic problems. Another bad corner is that at the top of Symonds Street. To divert traffic from this crossing a bridge, similar to the Grafton Bridge, across the gully at Arehhill, has been suggested, and preliminary estimates have been formulated, though the City Council has not yet got beyond the stage of dallying with the proposition. In this and other problems both the City Council and the Newmarket Borough Council will shortly have to adopt a definite and courageous policy; otherwise they will be laid open to the scorn and reproaches of future motoring generations.