TRAM TRACK AND ROADS

Evening Post, Volume CIX, Issue 148, 26 June 1925, Page 3

TRAM TRACK AND ROADS

ORIENTAL PARADE AND WAKEFIELD STREET

LONG DISTANCE WORK ON

CRAWFORD ROAD.

(By "X.")

Good roads are good by comparison. , Jervoia quay, Taranaki street, and a scrap of Wakefield street are good streets; the rest of Wakefield street is bad, and very bad at that. At tho end o£ a drizzling rain and a day of its usual fast and heavy traffic, it presents a moderately smooth surface to the eye, but looks are only skin—in this case mud and slush—deep, the potholes are all there, disguise or no disguise. Further on, the Oriental Bay Parade is in a shocking state, potholes that rattle vehicles, bones, and nerves, and pools from which are ejected bya fast moving and skilfully manoeuvred car or lorry showers of clinging and unpleasant mud upon the pedestrian, be he ever so many feet away. The Oriental Bay Parade road would bo an admirable road in parts of tho King Country—it is solely a matter of comparison—but round Oriental Bay it is distinctly ; and definitely bad —a new old Thorndon quay. Happily, there is something better ahead, as there was of the old Thorndon quay, a bituminous surface to end tho mud in -winter and , the dust in summer, and, all round tho year, the tremendous bill for road maintenance. Twice this length of road has been reconditioned within the last few i months, and to-day it is worse than it has ever been. However, it may yet Ibe worse before the turning point is 1 reached. | , PAVING GOES SLOW I The paving of Thorndon quay dragI ged on month after month because pavj ing necessarily kept a step behind.tramtrack renewal, and til at, apparently, -will be 'the rule in Oriental Bay Parade. A commencement has been made .with the tramway work, bnt the end is yet far ahead. Providing the surface can be kept in a state no worse than it is at present during the winter, motorists— not all of' them pleasure motorists by any means—may bump along over the potholes during next spring and summer with no more than reasonable complainings, but another winter they do not look forward to'with pleasurable anticipation. SIX MONTHS' INTERRUPTIONS If tha rate of progress established in track renewal work in Crawford road is a guide to tho probable progress of track work round Oriental Bay, the paving of the parade is many months ahead. It is practically .six months since , work beganon the Crawford road' Section,, and. it still goes on. There have been a few accidents, not many, and not particularly serious,' a« a result of the driving of two .streams of heavy and fast traffic to one side of the roadway, badly surfaced at that, but there have been narrow escapes in any number. The work is carried on during regular hours, on a line upon which a fast tramway service is run, say one. car every nine or. ; ten minutes. Each passing car means a complete stoppage of work, a removal of' gear from the track, a breather, a move back, and a recommencement. An appreciable amount of time is spent in this moving out and moving in, quite an appreciable time. The work has already occupied, say, six months. The reconditioning of the linos from John street to the Basin Reserve took, rather- longer; Oriental Bay's paving is pleasant to look torward to, if one has ample foresight. A WORK FOR THE 3 FUTURE Tlie paving of Wakefield street, which, surfaced, will immediately' spring into popularity with drivers of all classes of vehicles, fast, slow, heavy, and light, as an alternative to the congestion of the Courtenay place route, is apparently still' further ahead again, for the decision, to lay tram tracks in Wakefield and Victoria streets is seemingly somewhere in a pigeon-holo. Plainly, so many men can accomplish so much work in a given time, and no more, / but a great many users of city roads would bo interested in an experiment having in view the confirmation or compounding of their that tramway track work in such lengths as Thorndon quay, John street to tho Basin Reserve, and Crawford road, could be prosecuted more rapidly—or, rather, not so slowly— were provision made for so many hours of unbroken work per 24 hours, in placo of the system followed of starting and stopping at each passing tram-car's interruption.