Forestry road-funds proposal criticised

Press, 2 September 1981, Page 10

Forestry road-funds proposal criticised

PA Wellington The Industrial Transport Association has criticised proposals to raise up to $lO million extra a year to improve roads for forestry development. It said that Suggestions that future Forest Service contracts allow for improving roads or that a fund be established from levies on milled timber were “desperate and discriminatory.”

The reading director of the National Roads Board, Mr Fred Langbein, made the proposals to a meeting of the board.

He said that between $5 million and ?10 million extra a year would be needed to improve existing roads for planned forestry development.

Mr Gleve Costello, the secretary of the association,

whose members are the Sawmillers’ Federation, the Road Transport Association, and the Contractors’ Federation, said that mills could accept either option only if they could pass the increased and unwarranted costs on to the end user.

Such an imposition could only be discriminatory. The aim of the Road User Charges. Act. 1977, had been to ensure that every road user paid an equal share of roading costs.\The forest industries paid their fair share.

The association would vigorously oppose any efforts to impose additional levies on its members;.:,

The proposed measures were a desperate, last-ditch effort to preserve the nation’s’ roads from crumbling as a result of an apathetic approach by the Government to National Roads Board funding.