TO HATAITAI

Evening Post, Volume 91, Issue 91, 15 October 1923, Page 8

TO HATAITAI

AN OLD ARGUMENT RECALLED.

Town history, like national history, quite regularly repeats itself, and thus at the present time residents in the eastern suburbs are agitating for a wider tunnel through Mount Victoria than is at present proposed by the City Council for the Ellice street route, just as earlier residents did when the present Hataitai tunnel was being driven through the hill, roughly, twenty years ago. In 1904 and 1905 they maintained that a serious blunder was being made in boring a tunnel sufficient for one-way tram traffic only in place of a tunnel which would provide for two-way tram traffic and pedestrian traffic; to-day, with Hataitai and the eastern suburbs populated in fact and not merely in vision, those living on the eastern side of the Mount Victoria ridge maintain that another blunder will be made if provision is not made in the second tunnel for a steady flow of vehicular traffic, as well as for. two-way tram traffic and pedestrian traffic.

The 1904 'and 1905 tunnel arguments were long and heated, but the position was rather more complex than it is to-day,' for the reason that Hataitai as a true suburb was then merely a dream, and was first and foremost a Very valuable holding of the Hataitai Land Company, which was required under the agreement drawn up with the then City Council to guarantee something like £10,000 towards the cost of the tunnel, and which again entered into agreements with the comparatively few people then residing in the valley that they should contribute one shilling per foot of frontage towards the £10.000 guarantee.

The work of driving through had meanwhile been commenced, but the contractor, with the tw 0 factions, narrow and wide tunnel, arguing at great length through the newspapers, a t public meetings, everywhere and anywhere made an offer to th e City Council to so widen the cut as to provide for two-way tram traffic and a footpath for an additional expenditure of a mere £4774, and actually held up his brick arching for a fortnight while that offer was being thrashed out at more meetings, by more newspaper correspondents, and over the family tea table. The offer was not accepted, and the single track tunnel went through the hill.

The net cost to the city for the present tunnel was between £6000 and £7000, and an additional £5000 would have brought about the driving of a double track tunnel. But that was twenty years ago.