Beating the Traffic

The day may never come when the traffic nightmare of modern U.S. cities will be permanently and happily solved. But little by little, Americans are learning to beat the frenzy with the imaginative use of modern techniques. One successful device: permanent television. Executives of the First National City Bank of New York, for example, use closed circuit television between midtown and Wall Street offices to avoid time-wasting and frustrating travel between two points that are 82 carbon-filled blocks apart.

Since the two locations are both "head" offices, the bank needed a way to coordinate executive operations and communications as if the offices were not really separated. The money committee, for instance, meets every morning. The bankers at the midtown offices at Park Avenue and 53rd Street assemble in their conference room while their colleagues on Wall Street gather in theirs. With cameras trained on each group, and with two TV screens picturing each scene, the members conduct their business as if they were together in one room. Staging plays no part in the meetings; the bankers do not even bother to wear the nonreflecting blue shirts that TV show business requires. Says Senior Vice President C. Sterling Bunnell, "We all had a momentary self-consciousness the day we found ourselves sitting several miles apart facing the cameras, but now it's absolutely second nature."

Bank customers also use the TV taxi. If a customer in the downtown office needs to discuss his Brazilian investment problems with the Vice President in Charge of Brazil who is uptown, they can get together on camera and even exchange copies of papers via a document transmitter.

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