Traffic Control in Paris
| Author | M. Challier |
| Date | 01 July 1930 |
| DOI | 10.1177/0032258X3000300310 |
| Published date | 01 July 1930 |
| Subject Matter | Article |
Traffic Control in Paris
By M.
CHALLIER
Special Commissary, Traffic
Department,
Municipal Police, Paris
[Translated]
,
TRAFFIC
Control'
includes the business of competent
authorites to post on the public highway officers whose
duty it is not only to look after the observance of police traffic
regulations,
but
to intervene, apart from any actual violation,
for the purpose of ordering, co-ordinating and regulating the
flow of vehicles.
It
can therefore be claimed that
this'
Con-
trol ' is quite of old standing. As regards Paris, at the time of
the creation of a Police Corps in March
1829,
20
(out of an
actual total of 71) were appointed to carry out, under the
orders of a Commissary and a senior constable, traffic duty at
the twelve principal cross-roads of the capital.
A complete history of the traffic control systems employed
would risk being too
lengthy;
and so, in order to bring the
treatment of the subject within practical limits, I will confine
myself to the examination of certain systems. I cannot do
better than choose those which William Phelps Eno, in his
recent book Simplification
of
Highway Traffic, has considered
as the principal ones :
(I)
The
Block System.
(2) One-Way Traffic (Le Sens unique).
(3)
The
Gyratory System (' Round-about ').
I shall take up the first two, making only a rapid study of
the universally known One-Way Traffic. I shall deal at
greater length with the Block System in endeavouring to
explain clearly the successive forms in which it has been
applied to Paris. 447
THE
POLICE
JOURNAL
THE
BLOCK SYSTEM
The
Block System, according to
Mr.
Eno, consists in
alternatively stopping and starting vehicles at a street junction
in such amanner
that
the traffic develops in
turn
in each of these
roads. Partial
stoppage-which
is employed at a particular
spot or at the moment when absolute stoppage is not necessary
--consists in retarding individual vehicles or signalling to
them
to advance by means of hand signals, in order to facilitate their
movement with the least possible danger and delay.
This
temporary hold-up method is in its essence
the
French
system. More
than
any other, it calls for intelligence
and initiative from
the
man,
but
it offers more flexibility.
It
is
the
one which in view of the topographical irregularities of
our
City, has up to the present given
the
best results.
The
fact
that
it depends above all on
the
initiative left to the
constable on point duty, is by no means in contradiction to the
additional control provided during recent years by mechanical
processes. When, with
the
main object of reducing the
number
of constables on point duty,
the
question of the
establishment of apparatus destined to replace
the
command
signals formerly given by
hand
or staff came
up
for con-
sideration,
the
following general principles appealed to the
administration.
In
the first place, the signals whether visible or audible
should be designed in such amanner as to reproduce
the
movements of
the
staff wielded by the point-duty constable,
with the help of a cycle of three movements, having for their
object
the
alternative guidance of vehicles at a cross-roads.
In
the second place, no system of
pure
mechanical control
should be employed, it being the
duty
of the manipulating
constable, to regulate according to circumstances,
the
sounds
and
the times of lighting or extinguishing
the
lights.
It
was in
19II
that
the idea of mechanical signalling was
first mooted at
the
Municipal Council of Paris.
In
awritten
report Councillor Emile Massard recommended this form of
signalling on the following grounds.
I.
Because there was not always a sufficient
number
of
police officers on point-duty in
the
streets.
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