We heartily welcome the letter! from "Green Bonnet" in our correspondence columns to-day and we hope that the ° public generally will lose no time in raising a strong protest against the intention of the two Councils to metal the whole of Avenue centre, there can never be any confusion between east and west bound traffic, for each current of which there is already ample space for two lines of traffic, where indeed but one usually appears.
We say without fear of contradiction that the abolition of the riding track is wholly unnecessary and would be a wicked waste of money, most urgently' needed elsewhere. It is well Foch. For those who may have overlooked the correspondence on this subject in Thursday's Muncipal Gazette we reproduce it herewith, On June 26 the Secretary of the French Council wrote:
As a result of the conference which the members of your Council had on Saturday last with their colleagues of the French Council, Tam directed to inform you that the Municipal Administration hava considered the abolition of the riding track in Avenue Foch on the nouth, and requests your Council to be'so good'as to adopt the same measure on the north.
T take the opportunity to point out that trafic has increased con siderably in the Avenue Foch by reason of the development of he western district of both Settlements, and that the total width of the Avenue is. barely sume lent for trafic, To this the assistant secretary' of the Council of the International Settlement replied on July 10:
have the honour to acknowledge receipt of your letter of June 2%, and, in reply, to inform you th the' Council is prepared out its share of metalling th isting riding track in Avenue Foch, and to state that it is proposed to out the work in the early part. of 1925.
First of all we deny in toto the premises on which the proposed abolition of the riding track is based, namely, "that the total width of the Avenue is barely sufficient for traffic." About a year ago, if we remember rightly, it was decided quite properly that the amount given to the riding track did not leave space enough on either side for one vehicle to overtake another. A strip was accordingly cut off the track on north and south, with the result that there is now ample room on each metalled band for known that the P.W.D. grant for road-making was severely cut, down in the Budget for 1924 of the International Settlement; and] that was a considerable time before anything was heard of this Avene Foch scheme.. If the'
Council has money to squander—and it certainly has not—let it be spent on widening the western exits of the Peking Road or in opening up a new trunk road from east to west through the northexn district, which would take off Chinese traffic from Nanking Road. To spend it on Avenue Foch, which is more than enough'
riy need that can be foreseen nly for some years to come, is simply wanton. That being 80, we maintain that the claims of the men who get up early to ride deserve full consideration.
Their numbers are considerable.
There are many men who keep a pony because it is, on the whole, the cheapest, easiest and best, form of exercise and from every point of view they are to be encouraged. If urgent necessity jeould be shown for metalling all Avenue Foch, the riding fraternity would have to bow to it, But there is no such necessity and the project to which the two Councils have agreed deprives a very large number of people of the only exit to the country left to riding men and uses up, for absolutely illusory gains, money of which there is not enough for vitally' important projects. Fortunately' the correspondence between the Councils shows that the work would not be begun till early in 1925. That gives six months for the reconsideration of an ill-advised, unnecessary and wasteful project, conceived and decided upon in half as many weeks. two rows of vehicles of any kind.
The present writer uses the Avenue Foch at least twice a day, sometimes oftener, in the so-called "rush" hours, and to say that its width is barely sufficient for the amount of traffic is, with all respect, a pure figment of the imagination.
But we are told that we must Jock ahead to the days when motor-buses will be running on the Avenue Foch, By all means Jet us do so. We maintain that they will make no essential difference to the ease of movement in this thoroughfare. Occasional-one encounters a motor-lorry, which is far more unwieldy than any motor-bus and more annoying to the ordinary driver, owing to the normal disregard of the people on it for anybody except themselves. Yet there is rarely any difficulty in overtaking it, But the point to be emphasized that the traffic in Avenue Foch is, and is likely to remain, essentially high-class traffic. There are no Chinese manufacturing quarters, served or likely to be served by it; wheelbarrows and handcarts, which are
Text read from the printed page and cleaned; old type leaves the occasional error.