TRANSPORT ACROSS THE HARBOUR

Auckland Star, Volume LXXVI, Issue 85, 11 April 1945, Page 4

TRANSPORT ACROSS THE HARBOUR

■pOYAL Commissions as a rule fit in very well with the schoolboy's *V definition of a lie as "an offence in the sight of God and a very present help in time of trouble." They so frequently provide a funkhole when a Government has a doubtful and unpleasant task, and is seeking an opportunity to escape its responsibilities by obtaining a contentious report by which it can avoid action, that the public has grown very suspicious of such inquiries. That comment, however, in no way applies to the combined request of the Auckland Harbour Board and the Devonport Ferry Company for a Royal Commission to report on the transport problems of the Waitemata Harbour. Those problems are urgent and insistent. The existing facilities are admittedly inadequate. The ferry service termini require overhaul and improvement, and faster and better boats are clamoured for by the forty thousand or more people who live on the northern side of the harbour. The Ferry Company recognises the need, but it reminds the Government that there is an equal, or a greater, clamour for a bridge and a lesser one for a tunnel. Those who advocate the alternatives suggest that the work should be put in hand as soon as the war is over, as a means of immediate rehabilitation for many returned men who will be seeking work. If either be constructed the ferry service will, for the most part, disappear, and if more vessels are now built they will become useless before they have earned a tithe of their cost. Further, it is pointed out that such additions and suggested improvements to the termini also are seized upon, sectionally, as tending to delay the erection of a bridge, so that board and company will be accused of hampering progress if they do something or do nothing. That is the case which both unite to make to the Prime Minister, and it cannot be effectively answered until the intentions of the Government are made known. The construction of bridge or tunnel must fall on the State, seeing that either would serve not only the areas in which the Ferry Company operates, but also the whole of the North Auckland peninsula. Costs and site of bridge or tunnel must be accurately estimated, before any decision of such grave importance is made to ascertain whether the work is an economic possibility at the present time, and such an inquiry cannot by any stretch of imagination be left to a Department. It is a matter for expert investigation, open to all who have any right to express their views, and a Royal Commission offers the best means of proving whether the construction can and should proceed. If the answer is in the negative, board and company will be in a position to give facilities commensurate with the needs of the transharbour suburbs.