Tunnel Road or Port Christchurch?

Press, Volume LXXII, Issue 21809, 15 June 1936, Page 10

Tunnel Road or Port Christchurch?

The Mayor of Christchurch and seven other representatives of local bodies and commercial associations in the Christchurch area have written a very sensible letter to the Prime Minister urging that the Government give no countenance to the Port Christchurch League’s proposal for a referendum to decide whether citizens favour the scheme to construct a harbour in the Sumner estuary or the scheme to link Christchurch to Lyttelton by means of a tunnel road. The grounds of the request are two. In ?he first place, it is pointed out that the question is not one which can satisfactorily be settled by a referendum. The data on which a sound decision must be based can be collected and weighed only by I arbou. engineers and accountants; they cannot possibly be set out in a form in which they will be easily assimilable by voters. In the second place, the writers of the letter claim with every justification that informed opinion is already overwhelmingly in favour of the tu: nel road scheme. Indeed, it would have been fair to go further and to say that the Port Christchurch League’s propaganda has not brought its own objective any nearer to realisation and has merely sufficed to prevent any scheme being proceeded with. The. league would not be any further ahead in the highly improbable event of its scheme being favoured bv a referendum the result of which can commit no one. Presumably the Government will not attempt to build a harbour in the Sumner estuary without an expert enquiry into the project; and the opinion of its experts will inevitably be the same -1 the opinions of other experts who have been consulted, viz., that the expenditure would not be justified, Christchurch does need better access to the sea; and it has now an unrivalled opportunity to get from the Government the money necessary for the improvement. The Port Christchurch League should realise that, if the opportunity is missed, it will be largely to blame.