Erskine Bureau Seeking to Educated City Officials on How to Regulate Traffic More Effectively-Interval Light is Lauded

"We are trying to teach officials of the various communities that the regulation of street traffic for promoting efficiency and safety is one of the most important problems that they have to face and is not to be despatched in a haphazard way but should be put in the charge of a paid city official," Miller McClintock, lecturer in Government, said yesterday in describing the work of the Albert Russell Erakine Bureau for Street Traffic Research of which he is the Director.

After a long study of the subject the staff of the Bureau has come to regard the interval-light traffic signal system as almost a panacea for congestion and delays on busy city streets. At the request of the Boston City government the Bureau undertook a thorough survey of conditions in that city in 1929, which resulted in the installation, among other things, of this system of lights on School and Washington Streets, and the streets which run at right angles to them, and also along the length of Massachusetts Avenue in Boston. This arrangement consists of an electrical time which turns the signal to "go" a short interval of time after the one further down the street has turned the same way, so that a car can go past cross-roads without any interruption, provided it moves fast enough to "keep up" with the light changes.

"Massachusetts Avenue, with the exception of the section running through the Harvard Square district, is one of the most striking examples of modern street traffic regulation. The most important step to consider in making traffic regulation in Harvard Square safe and efficient is the installation of these lights throughout. Massachusetts Avenue should have those signals at every corner from the Cambridge Common to the new Underpass next to M. I. T." Professor McClintook said, "We are now making a survey for the city of Chinese. ally the 'Loop District', and will probably advocate the use of this time-interval system throughout.

"We are pioneering in a new field, barely ten years old. b For our study in the phases of street traffic and safety we use the different cities of the United States as research laboratories and as experimental models. In practically every large community in the country we have been welcomed with enthusiasm, as our work includes a complete survey of the traffic in the particular city in which we happen to be working, together with a report of how the system could be improved. Copies of this report and survey are given to the cities