TWO BAD ROADS

Evening Post, Volume CVI, Issue 104, 30 October 1923, Page 4

TWO BAD ROADS

The process of preparing to start work in the reconstruction of the Hutt road is painfully long and involved, but it has advanced another stage at last. The City Council has invited tenders for the work. As the contractors will have to provide a large and costly plant, as well as the necessary first-class stone and bitumen, the undertaking is evidently one. which cannot be entered into without careful thought, and it will be interesting to see whether the calling of tenders proves to be the pure formality which some critics of the Council's methods suspect. What everyone is agreed upon is a hope that when the action begins it will display more activity and speed than the intolerably long, and dull overture which now seems to be approaching its coda. Looking forward to a good main road to the Hutt Valley, one is encouraged to hope for an improvement before long in the important highway to Day's Bay and Eastbourne. The proper maintenance of this road appears to be handicapped chiefly by a grievance about the allocation of the cost. In the present conditions, the Hutt. County Council is putting it in a rough sort of order by shovelling loose metal where it seems to be necessary. This metal is immediately put where it is not necessary by the first motor-traffic that comes along. The road cries for the attention of a roller; and if th© question of cost is really the obstacle, there should be a proper and impartial inquiry, backed up by good will on the part of the local bodies conoerned.