THE PUBLIC AND THE STREETS.
WE do not wonder that when the Chief Commissioner of Police contemplated the London streets he was tempted to use his authority sharply. The confused aggregate of vehicles of every kind, from the Royal car- riage to the costermonger's barrow, which is to be seen every day in the principal thoroughfares, may well seem to admit of no treatment which is not revolutionary. Bond Street, Piccadilly, and the Strand are so many con- gested districts, and congested districts are always the despair of an administrator. The problem is how to induce some of these too numerous vehicles to take them- selves out of the way. Some element of the unmanage- able total must be got rid of. No power known to man or policeman can reduce them all into harmonious coexistence. The different lines of traffic are seeking to cross one another at every possible angle, and each line is made up of units moving at a different speed. Conse- quently, Sir Edward Bradford determined to weed the streets of one whole class of incumbrances. When once he had come to this decision he was in no doubt where to begin. Every class of vehicle but one is about some specific business. The omnibus may move slowly, but it has its journey's end in front of it. The waggon which has to deliver goods is under no temptation to loiter when once it is unloaded. So long as a cab has a fare inside it its sole object is to get to its destination as quickly as it can. The one exception to this universal rule is the empty cab. Its driver has no • motive for quickening its pace, for every unnecessary yard that he moves is so much deducted from his horse's capacity for work. It was only natural, therefore, that the " crawler" should be singled out for dealing with by police decree. It is the outcast of the whole system of London traffic, and Sir Edward Bradford has picked it out as the scape- goat which is to bear the whole blame of the present state of the streets. The instant it has put down a fare it is marked out as the victim of police vengeance. It is treated as unworthy of a frequented street, and hurried into the first by-lane that presents itself. There is no question that this drastic remedy has cured the actual disease. The aspect of the streets under the operation of the new order is completely changed. They have become so many open spaces tempered by omnibuses. The foot passenger can cross the road when he will. The full hansom can make its way among the heavy traffic with scarcely a check. Everywhere there is space and air and freedom, and at first sight it seems as though nothing remained to be done except to erect a statue of Sir Edward Bradford with his hand on the throat of the driver of an empty cab.
Yet this triumphant result has not been without its attendant drawback. It looks as though the Chief Com- missioner of Police had lost sight of the fact that the streets were made for the public, not the public for the streets. From more than one point of view the empty cab, instead of being a nuisance, is a convenience of a high order. Busy men have not time to follow up the hansom into by-streets, and mothers who have taken their children to a pantomime in the Strand dislike being referred to the Thames Embankment for the four-wheeler that is to take the party home. In certain streets the crawler has become an institution. How otherwise, for example, is the Strand to be supplied with cabs at all? There is not room, unfortunately, for what would best meet the need,—a permanent cab-stand down the centre of the street. Yet at every yard almost a cab is wanted, and as soon as a driver has set down his fare he takes his place in what may be called the circulating cab-stand,—the line of empties which slowly passes along the kerb-stone in each direction. The customers of the various shops on the route do not trouble themselves to keep a cab waiting while they are inside. They know that the moment they leave they have only to stop the cab that happens to be moving past the door at that moment. We cannot but think that the gain of this constant supply of cabs without trouble or delay is a solid convenience to a large section of the public, and that the framers of the police order have not given sufficient thought to this aspect of the case. We do not deny, of course, that it is not the only aspect. There are two classes of people who cherish a bitter antagonism against crawlers,—those who have carriages of their own, and those who use either omnibuses or their own legs. Every additional cab makes the street more crowded, and in proportion as it becomes more crowded the owner of a carriage sees his movements impeded by the throng of other vehicles. A large element in this crowd will consist of empty cabs, and when the angry occupant of the carriage sees that the road is blocked not merely by those who equally with himself have business to do, but with the vacant shells which once held those whose business is done, he calls for the immediate suppression . of the offenders. To a much larger class the crawler is detestable for two reasons. It prevents him from crossing the road, because he cannot see whether the passage is clear ; it prevents him from catching the omnibus he wants, by interposing a solid barrier which can neither be climbed over nor crept under. No one can have watched the foot passengers in the Strand during the present week without noticing the lordly indifference with which they now cross the road at any point. They can look up and down the whole length of the street, and choose the precise moment when it is most free. Nor is it less satisfactory to the passengers in omnibuses to escape being put down just under the nose of a hansom horse, whose driver is entirely occupied with the scanning the horizon in search of a fare.
It seems to us that the only way of dealing with these various wants is to set up a modus vivendi on the principle of give and take. It is not necessary that the same regulations should be made for every street. The Chief Commissioner has a variety of people to satisfy, and this end can only be attained by a careful examination of their several circumstances. Bond Street and Regent Street, for instance, differ greatly in the width between the pavements. A double row of crawlers in Regent Street would cause less inconvenience than an occasional crawler in Bond Street. There can be no good reason why this distinction should not be recognised in the police regulations, and the width of one street and the narrowness of the other have proper allowance made for them. The Home Secretary spoke hopefully the other day of finding a way to deal with the heavy traffic, but while the streets remain what they are we shall not pretend to any very great confidence in his success. The streets are too narrow for the work they have to do, and the cost of widening them simultaneously would be pro- hibitive. Nor is much to be hoped from railway exten- sion. If it lessens the crowds in the streets between the stations, it adds to the crowds in the neighbourhood of the stations. The best remedy would probably be the increased use of the Thames Embankment and the multi. plication where possible of parallel lines of road into which the traffic might be diverted. If, for example, all the traffic between Westminster and the City were sent one way by the Strand, Fleet Street, and Cheapside, and the other way by the Embankment, the difficulty would certainly be lessened. We have no wish to free cabs from the useful discipline of police rules ; we only suggest that those rules should be made rather more elastic.
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