ROADS AND ROAD METAL.

Auckland Star, Volume XLVII, Issue 51, 29 February 1916, Page 9

ROADS AND ROAD METAL.

(To the Editor.) Sir, —His Worship the Mayor, in his statement to your reporter, remarked that the Coromandel granite from the property visited (belonging to the Moshaii Granite Quarries, Ltd., in which 1 am interested), "was not of the standard required"; and my reply to this is the City Engineer's report, dated 29th November, 1910, pages 3 and 4: "I have had Coromandel granite broken by hand from the waste spawls at the New Zealand Granite Company's yard in Stanley Street, and used on the south side of Khybcr Pass Road, between Nugent Street and the Church of the Holy Sepulchre, and also in tho road between Quay Street and the railway crossing. The results have been fair, but it must be noted that the granite wae blended with ordinary bluestonc metal waste, which, in my opinion, is not a good binder. Samples of the granite, of local bluestono and local Milestone tar macadam, all laid in Khyber Pass Road at the point mentioned, during August, 1909, have been taken Jup and rcveal-'thc undoubted superiority- of the granfte to 'the local uluestoric|" and I bold a.' photograph whieli ' Corroborates this "undoubted superiority." Why this change of opinion? According to some of the councillors, tho waste of money in maintenance of Auckland roads is over £20,000 per annum, and Mr. Gunson said to your reporter "the present cost of ; maintenance was extremely costly." As the question of "roads and road metal" is so important from tho ratepayers' point of view, I hope, with your kind permission, to throw some light upon the causes of the waste that goes on from year to year.—l am, etc., R. R. HUNT.'