£10,000,000 NEEDED.

Auckland Star, Volume LV, Issue 168, 17 July 1924, Page 8

£10,000,000 NEEDED.

» SYDNEY'S ROADS. 130 MIXES TO BE REMADE. SURVEYOR'S REPORT. ('From Our Own Correspondent.) SYDNEY, July 11. To bring Sydney's streets into proper ! condition for traffic, the city surveyor ' has notified the council that he will need £10,000,000, and a staff of University [ graduates in engineering. There are 130 miles of city roadways. ', and he estimates that it will take 20 , years to reconstruct the whole area. At present, he admits, the streets are in a deplorable condition. Recent investigations carried out personally and through his officers had convinced him that the grades of most of tlie streets were faulty, and the only tbing to do was to take them all up and remake them. Before that could be clone, however, bis staff would have to be reorganises!! on the lines he had suggested. He would want, be said, a larger and more competent staff of technical experts. He is determined to have no more shoddy work,. and is pressing for the appointment to his staff of a number of University graduates in engineering. It has been discovered that the woodblockcd city streets are water-logged, and when they are in that condition, top-dressing with tar is only a stopgap. When a coating of tar is laid over them, it remains in good condition for a short time only, the water soon oozing through again. (;ood roads, he continued, could not be made unless proper methods of draining them were employed, and for that reason alone it would be a waste of money to lay costly bituminous roads, unless the foundations were prepared in a scientific manner. ' ]f he gets the staff he is asking the council to appoint, he states that he will entirely reconstruct the 130 miles of roadway in the city iv twenty years, at a cost of £10,000,000.