Mayor defends expressways

Press, 5 October 1977, Page 6

Mayor defends expressways

The anti-motorways lobby of Labour and Values candidates favoured abandoning long-established planning for a “sensible network of major roads,” said the Mayor of Christchurch (Mr H. G. Hay) last evening. Mr Hay was addressing a combined conference of the Motor Trade Association and Motor-Vehicle Dealers’ Institute. Such candidates were talking “a lot of emotive nonsense” in an attempt to win votes, and wanted instead of expressways “some airyfairy alternative which includes bikes, walking, buses, and trains.” Mr Hay said. Christchurch would not I have a mass of concrete elevated motorways such as one : saw’ in the United States, he said, but a “modest eventual < hierarchy” of expressways intended to save the environ-[• ment rather than destroy it.;' Better roads to meet pres-h ent traffic problems would also increase safety and re-i; duce fuel consumptionl caused by too much stopping h and starting on poorly j designed roads. Difficulties undoubtedly! faced the motor trade, Mr ] Hay said. “But people arefi still going to want, and bell able, to buy cars, and in-ii

dustry will still wish to use motor-vehicles to transport their products efficiently and at the least cost to the consumer.

“Perhaps your industry needs to look to its own public relations with some of our vocal minorities, who are predicting the demise of the car, and are blaming it for all our city’s social and environmental problems,” Mr Hay said.