When the vexed question of traffic crops up in Shanghai the average newspaper man feels somewhat diffident in making—suggestions, but a reader has sent in the ideas upon which this article is based, and while the writer is not pr2- pared whole-heartedly to give them his support without very much more investigation, he feels that the Subject is one which deserves public attention, The principal streets of Shanghai, more particularly the Central District, present an ¢ppalling problem at certain hours of the day when the traffic is at its greatest, It is mainly due to the very eficient handling of the local" police that such thoroughfares as Nanking Road are at all possible. and to them has to be extended every praise for the manner in which they make some of the streets, too narrow for present-day demands, at all able to cater for the large number of vehicles using them. In some of the other—streets temporary congestion arises by reason of th tramcars, admirable institutions in their war, but by reason of their inflexibility totally unable to do anything else but keep on their and make every other form of vehicle yield to them. On this point the "Scientific American" thas much of value to say "Since the amount of traffic they will hold is limited by the tracks on which they run, it will be impossible for them to keep up with the growing needs of transportation unless new tracks are laid. This, however, is prohibited by—the increasing congestion of privately owned vehicles on the highways. Increasing population. on the one hand. demands more public transportation facilities. The increasing number of privately owned passenger and commercial vehicles, the other hand, demands better highway facilities.""
Text read from the printed page and cleaned; old type leaves the occasional error.