It is highly important that the city should be able effectively to control the traffic on streets and boulevards, and especially to keep designated residence streets free from heavy teaming or particular kinds of traffic (such as through teaming, not going to or from property fronting on the particular street), without formally turning such streets over to park authorities as boulevards. This power may be given by the 96th paragraph of Section 1 of Article V of the statute in relation to cities, villages, and towns,[48] which authorizes the city council to “direct, license, and control all wagons and other vehicles conveying loads within the city, or any particular class of such wagons or other vehicles.” If more specific authority is required, it should be obtained from the legislature. The streets are held by the city in trust for the general public and cannot be diverted from that purpose by the city without special authority.[49] The legislature, however, as representative of the public, has control over them, and may limit the public right to make free use of streets; as it actually has done in the statute authorizing the wheel tax.[50] It may authorize municipal authorities to designate certain streets as pleasure driveways, to the exclusion of heavy traffic,[51] or to turn over any of its streets to park boards for boulevard and driveway purposes;[52] but the city cannot, without legislative authority, divest itself of the control of a street nor restrict the public in the reasonable use and enjoyment thereof.[53] General authority has been conferred upon city councils to regulate the use of streets, but this provision of the statute cannot safely be relied upon as an unqualified delegation of power to set aside some streets for exclusive use as pleasure driveways, since the Act of March 27, 1889,[54] expressly empowers the municipal authorities of a city or village to select for that purpose _not more than two streets_ within the corporate limits. This doubt the legislature should be asked to set at rest. The narrow scope of the powers of Cook County has already been commented upon. While counties could not, under the present constitution, be authorized to pay for improvements by special assessment, the general assembly might empower the county board to purchase or condemn land within or without the city limits for parks or other public uses, the cost to be paid from the proceeds of any bond issues which the people might see fit to vote within the five per cent limit of indebtedness. A park commission or forest-preserve commission, established as an administrative department of the county government, would be an appropriate agency for carrying out these objects.