ROADS AND THE MOTOR

Evening Post, Volume CV, Issue 23, 27 January 1923, Page 6

ROADS AND THE MOTOR

Taking a recent exhibition of motor vehicles as a text, "The Spectator" publishes an article which is a timely warning on the question of road policy in Britain, and in many respects its arguments apply in New Zealand. It is contended that a progressive reduction in the price of motor vehicles, having brought motoring within the reach of most people for pleasure arid of everybody for business, is certain to produce an enormous increase in motor traffic. Roads which in pre-motor days would have been regarded as almost luxuriously good are increasingly unsatisfactory ; they are too harrow, too crooked, too weak. Especially they are liable to failure under the heavy loading imposed by a modern char-a-banc and commercial lorry. "The Spectator" remarks that the motor era has not only made the countryside more mobile ; still more important is the fact that the towns (including their manufacturing activities) are moving into the country. This is the fulfilment of a well-argued theory developed many years ago by Mr. p. G. Wells; and "The Spectator" foresees as the result very important changes.in the industrial situation, especially in the possible combination of part-time agricultural work with part-time? labour in trades hitherto regarded as' urban. "But," it t remarks, ("everything which figures in our dreams depends upon the adequacy, of theroads."

In this country the pressure of traffic is, of course, not nearly so great as upon the roads in England ; on the other hand, most'of the Dominion's roads.are so poorthat they cannot bear what traffic there is. And coming to our immediate surroundings, it must be obvious to anyone who has driven out of the city to the north that our so-called highways, while often pleasing to the eye, are more remarkable for their freedom from tragic accidents than for their inherent safety. Such narrow and tortuous roads effectually forbid that urban expansion which is the natural sequel' of modern transport. Worse still, the'unbalanced finance of the times converts roads of the prevalent type into a distinct source of economic loss. Railway freights are being undercut by road transport charges, which, unlike railway rates, are not loaded with the cost of keeping the "permanent way'- in order ; worse still; with money hard to get, the "growing heavy traffic is taking far more out of the roads than is being put back into them by repair work-; and the result will no doubt be found that what has been saved by those who have chosen the. cheaper road transport will be far outweighed by %yhat the community must pay in the ' future* This economic error might possibly .have been avoided ; but it was not. Moreover, its perpetration will probably go on unchecked as long as' differential tariffs remain as an inducement. The roads can thus to

some extent be saved by an adjustment of railway charges, but the obviously sound and proper course in view of the inevitable growth of motor traffic is to take every reasonable means to fit the roads as rapidly as may be for the work they have to do.