ANOTHER BRIDGE WANTED

Press, Volume LXXII, Issue 21806, 11 June 1936, Page 19

ANOTHER BRIDGE WANTED

TO THE EDITOB OF THE PBBSS. Sir,—lf the City Council has any more money to spend on bridges do you not think it might consider the construction of a proper traffic bridge over the Avon to connect Park terrace with Antigua street near the Public Hospital? Such a bridge has been badly required in that locality for years. The only reason I can trunk of that one has not been built there is that wheeled traffic might disturb hospital patients, which argument does not now hold good in the case of present-day silent-running motor-cars, though open-exhaust-motor-cyclists would have to exercise a “bit of common” when taking the new bridge. If a patient has to be taken to the hospital from anywhere north-west of the Avon river, instead of being able to be taken by a direct route, a detour has to be made from Park terrace to the Montreal street bridge. In an urgent case the extra time required for transport might mean* something serious for the patient, particularly as an acute angle to the right has to be taken at 1 ’ that bridge to get into Oxford terrace, where there is a tram stop pretty close to the bridge, and other traffic is congested there at all times, more or less, to say nothing of race days and show days, when traffic inspectors have to be on duty. All wheeled traffic that has to find its way from anywhere north-west of the Avon has to go via Montreal street bridge to reach Christchurch west, Spreydon, Addington, etc. Conversely, traffic from these places to the north side of the Avon has to go as far as the Monteral street bridge and around Cambridge terrace to Park terrace (to take the nearest route) in order to be able to reach any suburb in the north-west. In these days of hurry and time-savers, ought the lack of a bridge, to serve the districts mentioned, be much longer delayed? If tlm money squandered by the council on the Causeway road to save a few yards which few motorists wanted to save —and which, after about three years, is not yet available for traffic—had been spent on a bridge at Antigua street it would have been a great convenience, and the city would possess a useful and valuable asset instead of a snow-white mastadon! If such a work as suggested had been carried out instead of the Causeway “scheme” useful work would been provided for out-of-warktrades*-, men instead of useless toil for a squadj of time-wasting, shovellers. About th# same stretch of road would be saved by the bridge scheme as Was supposed to be saved by the Causeway scheme. —Yours, etc., SHORT CUT. June 9, 1936.