TOLL-GATE EXPEDIENT

Evening Post, Volume CV, Issue 27, 1 February 1923, Page 6

TOLL-GATE EXPEDIENT

The Minister of Public Works has approved the establishment of a toll-gate on the Day's Bay. road as a means of obtaining revenue for the reconstruction and maintenance of the road. In his letter notifying this decision, the Minister makes it clear that he regards the road as exceptional, and exceptional it certainly is. It is not on a through route, and it furnishes only an alternative and limited means of communication with the Eastern Harbour district. To require the Hntt County Council to provide wholly for its maintenance from ordinary revenue would be inequitable, when' a valuable area which it serves lies, beyond the county's borders. At the same time, there are distinct objections to levying upon contiguous local authorities for contributions to the cost of upkeep. The road cannot be classified mainly as a business route, and the indirect benefit derivable from it by people who are not motorists is small. In the circumstances a tollgate is probably the best expedient for providing the necessary funds for reconstruction and maintenance. To admit that a, toll-gata is

the best expedient is not, however, to admit that it is the final solution of a difficult problem. *

The Public Works Department Committee which investigated the toll-gate question in Taranaki' reported strongly against such methods of collecting revenue, and, moreover, was able to show that the local bodies agreed with its objections. "The local bodies," the committee stated, "are unanimously of the opinion that the establishment of toll-gates is an undesirable and retrograde step, but they argue that in the absence of any other legal method of apportioning the cost, and in the present state of local body flnanee, they have no option." Among the arguments against toll-gates are the cost of collection (ranging in Taranaki from 9.34 to 25.69 per cent.) and the effect of the toll-gate in diverting or checking traffic. The former argument will certainly apply to the Day's Bay road, but the latter may not have the same application in view of the exceptional circumstances of route and class of traffic. In its Taranaki investigation, however, the Public Works Committee found the arguments against tollgates so weighty that it recommended that no more permits should be granted and that existing toll-gates should be abolished when a Main Roads Act or other compensating legislation came into onera^ tion. A Main Roads. Act has been passed, but it is only a first instalment of legislation, and under it Little can be done beyond preparing the way for more complete measures. The Day's Bay road should not be left in its present state pending such measures, and there fore some' temporary means of relief are necessary. But the .final solution will not be attained, we believe, until a competent main road authority is established and is able to devise satisfactory ineth ods for iraintaining, hot only ar terial roads, but roads such as that to the Eastern Harbour district, which ire properly chargeable to no single local authority. There is all the more need then for the early establishment of the main road authority.