THE TUNNEL AND THE ROAD

Evening Post, Volume CVI, Issue 127, 26 November 1923, Page 8

THE TUNNEL AND THE ROAD

Whether all residents in the eastern suburbs maintained that the proposal for the building of a new road from the eastern portal of the new tunnel through Mount Victoria was altogether justified or no, remarked a member of the City Council to a "Post" reporter to-day, he could not gather from what had so far been published, but from the point of vjew of councillors who had looked carefully into the matter and in the opinion of the engneers the "road as planned would be a? sound investment. The new road would skirt the foot of the hill for a short distance and would then turn slightly and join up with Wellington road, thus leading traffic directly and on good grades towards Kilbirnie, giving a clear- "run through" to traffic, both tram and vehicular. The position was simply one of economy. A vast amount of rock would be cut out in the course of driving the tunnel, and something had to be done with it. It was expected that the quality of much of it would be good, and the question was whether that ■ high-qualifcy metal—if it should be high quality—should be transported for a mile or half a mile even and dumped into the sea at very great expense, or whether it should be utilised practically on the spot in building a road that would undoubtedly be required as traffic grew and speeded up. A good ideal had been made of the fact, continued the councillor, that the council had not at first made known its plans for the building of the new road, hut there was sound enough reason for its silence upon that point: land had to be acquired, at the least negotiations had to be entered into with the owners of property likely to be affected, and the council had no wish to pay fancy prices to shrewd speculators who might" rush in to buy—and sell. :