Merchants Protest

When the elimination of parking was discussed in committee, merchants in the "loop" area declared such a step would be ruinous to trade, adding that from twenty-five to as much as fifty per cent of their business came from motorists who parked in the "loop" in front of or adjacent to their shops.

It was necessary to get the facts. With the cooperation of retail stores of every class and location in the "loop" an all-day census of shoppers was made. Nearly 100,000 persons were interviewed. Analysis of the result revealed that parked cars contributed not 25 per cent, of the number of shoppers, but 1.5 per cent.

Measurement of curb space disclosed the additional fact that, even with half-hour parking strictly enforced, the amount of available parking space along the curbs was inadequate to care for more than a fraction of the demand. Some 10,000 cars were allowed to dam up the movement of approximately 300,000 vehicles a day.

"No parking" has been a definite success in Chicago. Retail trade has increased rather than diminished. More people and more vehicles get in and out of the "loop" with a greater degree of convenience than before. Tremendous economies have been effected in the handling of merchandise by the increased efficiency of the streets.

One example of this increased efficiency, and what it means to street users, seems worth quoting. In a recent article in "Nation's Business" the superintendent of vehicle service of the Railway Express Agency, operating some 200 definite routes in the "loop" area states, "No parking has already increased our speed twenty-five per cent, as far as travel is concerned. Since the ordinance went into effect we have been able consistently to handle five per cent, more business in the "loop" with exactly the same number of vehicles and the same personnel."

But "no parking", successful as it has been in Chicago, is no universal panacea for all traffic ills. The one fact proved by Chicago's case is that, when street storage interferes seriously with street movement, parking must go. As in every aspect of the traffic problem, the actual requirements of a given situation must determine the proper remedy.

Parking plays a more important role, for instance, in some cities than in others. In Boston, eighty in every thousand parkers are store customers. In San Francisco a survey showed the ratio to be 112 per thousand. San Francisco and Boston merchants may well say, "No parking is feasible for Chicago, but not for us."

A recent summary of the progress in traffic control made by the San Francisco Traffic Survey Committee includes reference to a two million dollar reduction in accident and damage claims arising from the more orderly flow of traffic under the new San Francisco Traffic Code.

Sidewalk Saturation Studied

One of the more interesting aspects of the Boston survey, conducted by the Bureau for the Mayor's Street Traffic Advisory Board, was a study of sidewalk saturation, made to determine. If possible, an index to sidewalk width in relation to pedestrian volume. It was found that sidewalk convenience ceased to exist at 800 pedestrians per foot of sidewalk width per hour.

Another somewhat startling aspect of Boston's traffic problem was discovered by an all-day origin and destination survey which showed that approximately thirty per cent of the traffic in the downtown district was mis-routed. The results seemed to indicate that even Bostonians were unfamiliar with the most direct routes from one point to another in their own city, and either through habit or lack of better knowledge were adding to the congestion of already heavily over-burdened traffic ways, when simpler, more direct, and often less congested routes were open to them