Christchurch Streets

Press, Volume XC, Issue 27408, 22 July 1954, Page 10

Christchurch Streets

The huge bill of £2,375,697 for the reconstruction of Christchurch streets to cope with modem traffic should neither surprise nor daunt city ratepayers. Big increases in the volume and weight of motor traffic, at a time when the inescapable neglect during the war years had weakened the streets, had made it plain that much money would have to be spent in the next few years. This would have been a very serious matter for ratepayers if it had not been for the national reading inquiry, the most important local result of which is that the big Christchurch programme can be financed almost entirely without call on the ratepayers. The position might have been different if Christchurch had been in a singular position; but the Roading Investigation Committee found that almost every roading authority in New Zealand war in the same kind of trouble. The Main Highways Board put the cost of its reconstruction needs at £63,000,000, county councils put theirs at £28,000,000, and the municipalities put theirs at £21,000,000 —a grand total of more than £112,000,000. The magnitude of these figures influenced the committee to recommend, and the Government and Parliament to accept, the new national roads scheme, without which the whole roading system, urban and rural, would crumble even more quickly. Under the scheme the Christchurch City Council will receive a subsidy at the rate of £ 1 2s a head of population, bringing in rather more than £150,000 this year. On a conserva-

tive calculation this would pay interest and sinking fund charges on a loan of more than £2,100,000. This is not all gain to the ratepayers, because user tax payments in previous years amounted to nearly half the amount of the current subsidy; but it is a fact that motor

transport—private, public, and commercial—will now meet almost the whole cost of reconstructing the city’s streets, leaving the ratepayers to pay a fraction of the capital cost and the greatly reduced maintenance bill on adequate roading. Municipalities generally will benefit more than counties from the new roading scheme; and they deserve to as a measure of tardy justice. The Roading Investigation Committee found that for years motoring on city and borough streets contributed about 30 per cent, of petrol tax revenue; but the municipalities in that time received only 8 per cent, of half the tax revenue. This in some measure accounts for the relatively higher standard of county highways. The report of the City Engineer (Mr E. Somers) to the City Council this week exposed a flaw in the National Roads Act. Because of its topography and geological formation, Christchurch is an expensive city to road. Yet it receives no greater help than other municipalities, which may have dry, solid foundations, making road work much cheaper. It would be fairer if the subsidy were based, not on population, but on the actual cost of the work, as the subsidy on main highways is. The great benefit the City Council is getting under the act should not blind the council to the inequity of an arrangement that will give less deserving cases even greater benefits. Christchurch has, however, one advantage over the other three large cities: it has few trolley-buses, and they are nearLiiC the exud of tbair life- The new diesel buses are hard on the streets, but the Roading Investigation Committee emphasised that trolleybuses “ are, in fact, excessively “severe on road maintenance.” The City Council may count among its blessings the electors’ rejection three years ago of the Labour trolley-bus policy.