TAR SEALING.

Ashburton Guardian, Volume 56, Issue 210, 18 June 1936, Page 4

TAR SEALING.

PROPOSED FIVE YEARS' WORK. I SOME ASHBURTON COUNTY BO ADS. (Special to the " Guardian.") CHRISTCHUROH, This Day, A five years' programme of road construction, in Canterbury, allowing for the sealing of some 65 miles of road surface a year, was adopted yesterday at a conference of local bodies convened by the Canterbury Progress League. The chairman of the Progress League (Mr F. W. Johnston) presided over a good attendance. He said the programme was merely a tentative proposal for submission to the Highways Council.

Mr J. E. Btracban (chairman of the highways committee of the league, which drafted the programme) said the programme was limited, in that it did not take into account all that might happen diiring the next five years. The committee had confined itself, accordingly, to roads that had already been declared main highways.

Mr J. Carr (Ashburton County) said that his council was seriously concerned as the only work allotted to its territory in the first year of the programme was a length of nine miles from Hinds to the Rangitata bridge. In view of the announcement by the Minister for Public Works that he intended to take over the whole of the PictomBluff main highway, it was to be assumed that this section would be laid down by the Government. It was unlikely, however, that any work would, be done in the first year as the road had yet to consolidate, and consequently the programme offered no work to be carried out in the Ashburton County. He suggested that the work set down for Ash burton in the second year of the programme be advanced to the first year, and so on with the later years.

The programme includes the following roads in the Ashburton County:— First year—Hinds to Rangitata River, 9 miles. Second year Ashburton-Methven Highway, 17 miles 23 chains. Third year Ashburton-Wakanui Highway, 8 miles 4 chains. Fourth year Tinwald-Longbeach Highway, 11 miles 40 chains. Fifth" year—Rakaia-Alford Forest Highway:' Rakaia to Methven, 21 miles 60 chains, Tinwald-Mayfield Highway, 11 miles 22 chains. With the exception of the Tinwald"Mayfield Highway, all the roads are included as provisional additions to the programme fo." the year previous to that for which they are listed.