CITY SURVEY.

Auckland Star, Volume LXIX, Issue 81, 6 April 1938, Page 11

CITY SURVEY.

THIRTY-YEAR TASK.

VALUES OF £1000 FOOT. MT. EDEN BOROUGH NEXT. After .10 rears of intermittent activity I lie Survey Department lias virtually completed its resurvey of Auckland, and there are to-day on the footpaths and roadways around the city 40(H) standard survey marks distinguished by the letters • s S and an arrow on east-irdn plates Mink in the footpaths or surfaces of the streets. Carefully designed and built on foundations of eonerete. these are the -monuments" of Auckland's standard survey. Ihe marks so carefully fixed and protected are etched in brass set in the solid block, and have been measured with an accuracy which allows of an emir of only an i,, r h ,„- two in a mile. In 100,, when a beginning was made to re-survey the city, nianv of the marks established in the early settlement of Auckland were out of'position andtimc was lost in determining boundaries, street frontages and sites for new huildmgs. The frontages of Queen Street were found to be out of position and much work has since been necessary to .set them right. Even now one of the first essentials before plans are prepared for a new building to be erected "n an old city site is a complete survey of the area. Thus the dimensions of the site for the new departmental block in Jean Batten Place had to be accurately determined by instruments on the spot. Mount Eden Survey to Cost £1500. It is hoped in time to extend the standard survey to all the surrounding boroughs and so arrive at one homo" geneous survey covering the whole of metropolitan Auckland. As a first step in this extension arrangements have been made to begin immediately i n the borough of Mount Eden. The cost of tins particular work will ho about £1000 and from 12 to 1.1 months will be required for the task. The Borough Council has agreed to contribute twofifths of the sum, or £000. and the department, as in other surveys of the kind, will meet. th (i remainder of tincost. The borough's contribution will be spread over a period of fiy e years

It is appropriate that the Mount Eden borough should h s the first of the suburbs to receive attention, for it includes on the summit of Mount Eden the most important survey point in Auckland city and province* A]\ survey marks in this part of the Dominion are referred to this single point, and the survey system of .Auckland radiates from Mount Eden like a vast intricate network where every line and new survey mark is determined to a fraction of nn inch.

Although only the city and one or two of the more distant towns, including 'Whangarei and Te Awamutu, have so far been surveyed on the complete scale now proposed for Mount Eden, every district is included in the Department's skeleton standard surver. and possesses a limited number of "monuments" for the use of surveyors enframed in local work. The filling" in of skeleton plans to mark every street is. of course, a, much larger task than the fixing of occasional points, and many years may be required to complete it.

Value of City Frontages. Explaining the importance of accuracy, a Departmental survovor remarked t..-day that in the early' days, when land was nf little value." a few indies here or there In a survey mattered little, hut to-day when much" of the heart nf Auckland was valued at over £1000 a foot exactness was a first essential. There were parts of Queen Street where an inch of frontage was worth £100 or over, and old ideas of '•more or less" in title deeds had Ion:: since been revised. The term "more or less." however, still remained and was important to the surveyor. In Auckland city the surveyor's latitude in measurement is no more than one or two tent lis of an inch in a building frontage. In rural grazing land, on the other hand, a foot or two on one side or the other in the position of the boundary fence would be a trivial matter. "The standard survey provides the framework on which are built all the surveys both past and future," said Mr. IT. M. Ross, of the Survey Department, this morning. "Therefore, great care and accuracy, and ground marks of reliable permanence, are essential for the survey of the valuable metropolitan area of Auckland. The maximum permissible error in the standard survey is only one or two inches to the mile." Litigation Avoided. Although to the average individual the rites carried out by the surveyor are a profound mystery, the benefits are easily appreciated. Boundaries are defined with little possibility of dispute, litigation is avoided and future surveys based on standardised marks are carried out with less trouble and at a lower cost than where such marks are lacking.

Much permanent road improvement work is at present being undertaken by the City Council and other local authorities. Roads and footpaths are being laid down in permanent materials at permanent levels, and it is the policy of the Survey Depart merit where these improvements are made to locate existing survey marks and fix them in such a way that their positions will be preserved and tied permanently to the. standard survey.

Auckland is ahead of the other main centres of the Dominion in its standard* survev, and the work, which was held up for several years during the depression, and particularly when all available surveyors were required in Hawke's Bay to re-establish the survey records destroyed in the earthquake and fire at Napier, is now being pushed ahead as rapidly as possible.