HOUSING EVIL AND EMPTY LANDS

Evening Post, Volume CIII, Issue 57, 9 March 1922, Page 6

HOUSING EVIL AND EMPTY LANDS

The question of communications (transit levies and transport lines) in and with the Hutt Valley is opened up by the recent report to the Central Progress League. There is already a double railway to Lower Hutt, and there is statutory authority to construct a concrete road to 'Petone. This authority should be acted on, irrespective of what competition may result between road and railway; but it remains an open question whether the concreted road will give the best transport and transit results under a system, of motor traffic) or under a system of electrical tramway traffic, or under a system of railless cars drawn from overhead electrical wires. So much for the communications between the City and the lower end of the Hutt Valley. As to the communications within the Valley itself, it is perfectly certain that the Railways Department should not be content with a ' single railway running mostly on the wrong side of the river. There must be either a duplication of the railway throughout (that is, from Lower Hutt to tipper Hutt), with feeder car services, driven by benzine or electricity ; or there must be a loopline of railway crossing the river at Petone or between Petone and Lovr&i- Hutt, serving Crown lands and bringing the neglected Hutt Park nearer the City, and travelling by way of Nainai and Taita to Silverstream, from which station an orthodox duplication (or perhaps another loop) could be continued to Upper Hutt.' If the loop-line idea were adopted, the- feeder services referred to above would possess, on the eastern side of the river, a railway trunk, of which they would become tjbe natural branches.

The Government should now reach a final determination on the question whether a railway to the Wairarapa via Potone, Lowry JBay, and *Wninui"O-mafca and ■ Orongorongo tunnels, is to be constructed

within any reasonably short period of "time. If the Government decides in the affirmative, the H/utt Valley communications plan should be made to fit this Wairarapa railway project. If not, then the Hutt Valley plan should be finalised on its own merits, and on the assumption that all Wairarapa traffic will go via Upper Hutt. Once the plan is made, Greater Wellington and the Hutt Valley should unite to push it into being. The more, populous parts of the City and the Valley should not forget that they have an interest in developing those parts of the Valley that are now in the painful process of transition from farm values to residential values. Here in Wellington we have a congested population; in Lower Hutt Borough^ within easy reach of modern traffic services if they existed, is room for many hundreds of people, in the adjoining county room for thousands ; but the houses and the people cannot go there till the traffic services are provided, and as the farm land that is waiting for them canndt afford to pay (out of its productive value as mere farm land) the cost of such services, it follows that the congested populace would be serving its own interest if it helped to find the money to push along the essential roads and rails. Unaided, the farm land cannot solve the problem of its own residentfal development. We are informed that already, in some cases, the annual rate-burden on it approaches in amount its rental valufe as farm land; ancl that the limit of rating has been reached. This is a case where the Government, the populous districts, and landowners gaining betterment should all contribute to the capital cost ■of siiburbbuildingj which is first and foremost "a question of transit and transport. But nothing will be done unless the people most concerned bestir themselves.