The Summit Road

Press, Volume CI, Issue 29872, 12 July 1962, Page 10

The Summit Road

The proposals of the Christchurch Regional Planning Authority for preserving the scenic beauty of the Summit road would inspire more confidence if the authority showed a greater sense of urgency and less anxiety to compensate landholders. It is almost exactly two years since the authority conferred with landholders on the prevention of unsightly building along the road. Even after that interval the authority is only now preparing legislation, which must wait another year at least. This scant regard for the public interest may be contrasted with the authority’s solicitude for landholders, who are to be compensated for not being allowed to build as they wish or to subdivide. Two years ago the landholders insisted that all they wished to do was to preserve their right to farm the land. That is the only right they can fairly claim. Why, then, when interest and duty run so well together, should they be compensated for doing what they want to do*

The local authorities asked to support the proposed bill should consider this question carefully, particularly as compensation could be very much higher than the £25 an acre mentioned by the chairman (Mr E. J. Bradshaw). That

is the current value of the land as sheep country; but what might its value become in another 20 years as sites for petrol stations, roadhouses, and holiday cottages? If the local bodies are prepared to find the £ 18,500 now involved the better course would be to buy the land and lease it in perpetuity to its present owners at a nominal rental, subject to a covenant giving a trust board power to control building. That would preserve farms for the farmers and scenery for the public. On the question of compensation, what about the principle of betterment? The case for betterment can seldom be proved; but acres of bare tussock on the Port Hills would have no subdivisional value if the community had not built a scenic road. The community as a whole, and no small section of it, is entitled to the full enjoyment of this road with its panorama of Banks Peninsula, Lyttelton harbour, Lake Ellesmere, mountains, plains, rivers, and the sea. This is more than a civic asset: it is one of New Zealand’s great tourist attractions, finally, the authority should not be satisfied until it has extended the proposed reserve to Gebbie’s Pass. The eastern end has some of the finest scenery.