SCRAP THE CENTRE-POLES

Sun (Auckland), Volume III, Issue 739, 12 August 1929, Page 8

SCRAP THE CENTRE-POLES

EIGHT AND A-HALF miles of Auckland’s busiest streets are divided by tramway centre-poles that hi these days of rush traffic constitute a menace to public safety. Every motorist knows that in weaving about in the traffic he has, whatever the contingency, to keep subconsciously in the hack of his mind the fact that in certain streets there are at short intervals these dangerous and out-of-date obstructions. Every now and then some unhappy motorist, occupied with avoiding another car or a tram, forgets about the centre-poles, and the result is an accident. Some of these mishaps are of such minor character that they are never brought to public notice, but others, like the one that occurred on College Hill on Saturday afternoon, end seriously or fatally. Both in human life and in economic loss the price Auckland has to pay for the perpetuation of these anachronisms is altogether too high. In the half-hearted manner that was so peculiarly its own. the old Tramways Committee of the City Council often discussed the problem, but naturally without carrying it any further. Two years ago the Auckland Chamber of Commerce took the matter up and appointed a sub-committee to investigate it. The result was an uncompromising attack on the centre-poles, hut still nothing has been done. The Tramway Department endeavoured to support its position with the argument that the centre-poles serve a useful purpose in dividing the traffic. This might be the case in Queen Street, where the traffic is compressed into parallel lines, but on any street where traffic has any latitude for movement the centre-poles are an acute danger, and on a very wet or rainy night they might almost be termed a death-trap. Undoubtedly the removal of the centre-poles will be c-ostly, as they carrv feeder wires as well as the-overhead trolly wires. There are 390 of them altogether, and it has been estimated that the cost of removing them and substituting other methods of carrying the wires would be not less than £40.000. In view of the loss of life for which the centre-poles have been responsible, this is an urgent expenditure that must be faced without delay. An associated problem is the question of jacks on tramcars. Tn the unfortunate accident in Queen Street on Saturday, the victim was pinned in agony for 12 minutes while a jack was brought from Wellesley Street. That twelve minutes might have meant the difference between life and death. In any case twelve minutes of intense human suffering is a large responsibility to be carried by those who say that it is impossible by any exercise of ingenuity to allow every tramcar to carry a jack. The Saturday morning and rush-hour traffic in Queen Street is becoming more of a problem than ever, and it grows increasingly evident that the trams must in a few years be banished from the street just as the buses were a few years ago.