Evening Post. FRIDAY, JUNE 9, 1922. ROADS: HALF-MILLION TO WORK ON

Evening Post, Volume CIII, Issue 134, 9 June 1922, Page 6

Evening Post. FRIDAY, JUNE 9, 1922. ROADS: HALF-MILLION TO WORK ON

Road finance, as outlined to the Roads Conference by, the Minister of Public Works, has the following sources of annual revenue, apart from the ordinary, revenue of local I bodies: I ' £ (1) Paid under the existing system out of the Consolidated Fund .' 60,000 (2) Paid voider the existing system out of the Public Works Fund 190,000 (3) Derivable from the newlyenacted duty on motor'tires 150,000 (4) Derivable from proposed vehicular licenses 150,000 The £60;000 from the Consolidated Fund.■;" is spent on maintenance of the roads, which are at present maintained by the General Government, because it has been decided by past Administrations that the upkeep of these roads is too heavy a burden to be carried by the somewhat poor and unsettled country through which they pass." The Minister, Mr. Coates, who is responsible for this quoted statement, adds: I have no doubt it will be some years before local authorities are in a position to take over the control of those roads, and therefore I have assumed that £60,000 (the amount derived from the Consolidated Fund) will continue to bs spent as jt is at present, and snbsequently will not be available for improvements, but Eunply to retain the present state of development of the roads on which it is spent. In short, this £60,000 a year of Consolidated Fund money is not to be available for the purposes of the new plan to improve primary and secondary roads, but is to continue to be earmarked for maintenance, at their present standard, of cer- j tain roads in poor country, in cases where the local body is adjudged to be unable to afford such/maintenance. The £60,000 may therefore be left ] out of immediate consideration, but it calls for this comment: If the Consolidated Fund is to be drawn on for certain road maintenance in certain poor localities, these Statehelped roads and localities should surely be the subject of an explicit annual return, so that the situation may be periodically examined with a view to considering whether the localities helped are those most worthy of help. It is understandable that the Government should go to special pains to see that made roads, possessed of an economic purpose, shall not become blocked and useless through the failure of the local governmental authority. To expend thousands of pounds on a road, and to allow it to deteriorate and close up with slips— which was the state, and, for all we know, may still be the state, of the Picton-Grove road—is bad business for everybody. But it is important to know why such a misfortune should be permitted in one case and avoided in another, and it is also important that the principle on which Government road maintenance money is disbursed —if there is a principle—should be examined by Parliament as to its soundness and the fairness of its application. Before saying goodbye to the £60,000, the conference [ might reasonably have asked for a little information on this point—in the general public interest, if not in the immediate interest of the primary and secondary roads, the improvement of which was the conference's main purpose. There remains the sum of £490,000; in round figures, half-a--million a year. This fund will go a long way towards a road policy if the conference has built unselfishly and well; and if the Government has the courage to stick to principles. The Minister proposes to create a Highways Board, the work of which, we gather, will be to coordinate the work of local bodies, but not to do the local bodies' " job " except in cases where the local body is incompetent or unwilling. Some or the county councils, it seems, wish to obtain the money without submitting to the supervision of the co-ordinating board, but the general history of local government -does not incline us to trust the county councils to this extent; and we think that the Government will fail if it merely provides the money without providing a central check upon its expenditure. A knotty point may be j found in the vehicular license fees, but we think the boroughs would \be unwise to allow their claims in this direction to imperil the scheme as a whole. A general view suggests that a constructive agreement is easily possible if the Minister proves a capable pilot, combining firmness with conciliation. There are certainly some people on the local governmental side who, if offered an inch, will proceed to claim a mile. But none of the difficulties is insuperable if the problem is approached on a business basis, free from urban or vuval bias and from all.partyrpolitical pongid- ■ erg%flJ3.