The Sun 42 WYNDHAM STREET, AUCKLAND MONDAY, DECEMBER 3, 1928 THE MENACE OF THE CROSSING

Sun (Auckland), Volume II, Issue 527, 3 December 1928, Page 8

The Sun 42 WYNDHAM STREET, AUCKLAND MONDAY, DECEMBER 3, 1928 THE MENACE OF THE CROSSING

IJVERY fresh level-crossing accident in New Zealand should give a jar to some official conscience. It requires no great effort of memory to recall the bland indifference with which the Railway Department, until the last year or two, greeted appeals for the reduction of the danger. It was difficult, even, to get a warning system installed. An inventive Wanganui builder named Pearson devised a signal that had novel and acceptable features; but he had to hawk it to Wellington, year after year, before the Railway Department reluctantly adopted it. On many eyil crossings the Pearson device now seems at least to he mitigating the peril. But there is only one way to banish the menace completely; and that way is to eliminate the crossings. The relative failure of warning systems, which may he rendered ineffective by wind and weather, mechanical failure, or those unfortunate human failings, carelessness and recklessness, has at last drummed some sort of a lesson into the official consciousness. The result is that a programme of level crossing eliminations is now under way. It takes its most elaborate form in the Hutt Valley, near Wellington, where there is an elaborate system of ramps costing £12,000 each. The elimination of the crossing is going to he an expensive business. New Zealand will have to pay heavily for the straight-for-the-mark methods of its former engineers, whose simple plan it was—years ago when the lines were under construction —to regard level-crossings as mere by-play, and the rights of horsemen and buggy-drivers, in a day when the motor-car was unthought of, as negligible. The Dominion must blushingly acknowledge ownership of some 330 level-crossings, none of which is really safe. All present elements of danger, and some are simply death traps. There are, in addition, those engineering monstrocities, combined road-and-rail bridges. That a system should be approved which permits these dangerous makeshifts in the interests of mere passing economy, is one of the baffling features of our progress. Their elimination, side by side with the reduction of the level-crossing evil, is going to cast a great responsibility on the financial wizardry of Mr. H. H. Sterling, and. a huge financial burden on railway administrations of the future. For, heavy as is the outlay now being devoted to the task, it is shown, by the maintenance of the appalling level-crossing death roll, to be not heavy enough. The Auckland Province has a bad record in level-crossing accidents. Tragedy intervened again at Hamilton on Saturday, and though the accident had features that make free comment at present inadvisable, it still adds its weight to the overwhelming argument in favour of a vigorous crusade against the crossingmenace.