Remedies Wanted
Page 3
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MOTORISTS advocate the clearing of buses and commercial vehicles from city-centre roads; bus operators advocate the banning of cars, and even sometimes commercial vehicles in peak hours, from the same streets; goods vehicle operators, usually less demanding, seek to have some form of access to shops from these self-same thoroughfares; the pedestrian insists on crossing where he will; shop workers refuse to take evening or early-morning deliveries of goods; office workers and schools refuse, by and large, to stagger hours.
What does all this add up to? Chaos: Nobody is satisfied. Everybody wholeheartedly recommends everyone else to give way in the national interest. The mythical " they " are always the first to be castigated. The more personal " I " seldom admits to fault.
All this, quite frankly, gets us nowhere. What are the essentials? First, roads were designed for movement; so get rid of parked cars by providing adequate, reasonably-priced off-street facilities. Secondly, the public have a right to travel by public transport as near to their destination as is feasible; so give buses some priority— at least in peak hours. Thirdly, if the goods are not in the shops at the time the public arrives, the exercise explodes; so let goods vehicles deliver.
Complaints are easy to voice. Remedies hard to discover. Shortly Mr. C. D. Buchanan, the urban roads planning adviser to the Ministry of Transport, is due to deliver his report. It is to be hoped that the remedies are plentiful, the sectional complaints (particularly of motorists) reduced to correct proportions.