Bustling Broadway

Sun (Auckland), Volume II, Issue 373, 6 June 1928, Page 10

Bustling Broadway

NEWMARKET’S TRAFFIC JAMS

ALLEVIATION of traffic problems ill Broadway, Newmarket, is expeeted to cost something like £140,000 in the next two or three years. Plans approved by the Newmarket Borough Council, and sent to Wellington for the final sanction of the TownPlanning Board, provide for the formation of a new street parallel to Broadway. The situation is one calling for courage and foresight.

Jf<EW centres can have been handicapped by a worse lay-out than the original street plan of Newmarket. The narrow streets, blind alleys and lack of arterial thoroughfares were due partly to topographical difficulties- —much of the vicinity was originally a swamp, from which the spurs of Mount Eden rose sharply—and partly to the operations of speculators in real estate. In addition there was the factor of casual growth. Blocks were roaded as settlement progressed, and not according to any plan conceived with vision.

The result was Broadway, a bottleneck into which converged traffic from Parnell and Upper Symonds Street. Broadway became the city's eastern gate, its importance increasing with the growth of the eastern and southern suburbs, and the development of the motor-car as an agency for movement

and transport; and its command so pronounced that it might have been conceived by the designer of a medieval fortress. with an eye to concentration as an intrinsic protection, rather than by people with a responsibility to plan for the future. SHOPPERS PASS ON

Broadway partly owes its position as a shopping centre to the amount of traffic which has to pass through it daily; but even this has become an embarrassment, for prospective shoppers pass on when unable to park their cars in the glut of traffic. Further, the lack of effective street openings off Broadway has kept property at the hack down to a low value, while real estate on Broadway itself

has brought up to £550 a foot. When the new street is put through it is expected that values will rise quickly, to as much as £IOO a foot.

Although there is already a fringe of shops in the narrow streets of Broadway, the creation of a rival shopping area in the new street is not immediately expected. On the lines of past demand it is thought that the street frontages will be taken first by manufacturers and warehousemen. Primarily the object of the improvements is to relieve traffic congestion, and so remove a real and growing danger to human life. Pedestrians must walk warily in Broadway, and conditions to-day give an indication of the manner in which problems will mount up in future unless they are tackled earnestly now. How the Newmarket Borough Council plans to meet its task is best shown in the accompanying map. The street sweeping from Mortimer Pass to Osborne Street will cut through a lot of old buildings, as well as the premises of Hardley’s, Ltd., metal workers Other modern buildings will be avoided, as Osborne Street will be widened on the side away from Marriott’s and the Rialto Theatre in one block, and on the opposite, side, away from Kent’s bakery, in the next block.

The brick structure known as Premier Buildings, on the corner of the Khyber Pass, will have to go, making room for a wide traffic circus, and a streamlined route into Carlton Gore Road. At its southern end the new road will be streamlined by the removal of the southern corner of Mortimer Pass and Manukau Road. This part of the proposition, however, is the City Council’s responsibility. Other measures planned are the construction of a deviation from Road, directly into Morrow Street; the widening of Morrow Street by eight feet; and the removal of a block at the corner of Crowhurst Street and Seccombe’s Road, thus giving Gillies Avenue a smooth run into Crowhurst Street, but these may be prohibitively costly. The lack of foresight which has marked much of Auckland’s street planning may be gauged from the fact that though Gillies Avenue at this point was formed only a few years ago, it was left with an awkward right-angled turn, with the Newmarket power station now planted fairly and squarely on the objectionable corner.

For the short-sighted policy of past administrators the present and the future must pay, and Newmarket has a particularly costly problem to solve. The solution presented cannot be termed ideal, but there are so many difficulties in the way that it seems the best and most practical when viewed from all angles. Considered with narrow vision, it involves some radical changes and expensive reconstruction. But some step toward improvement is so imperative that in a few short moiViis part of the work outlined may be begun.