MUD AND SLUSH

Evening Post, Volume CX, Issue 1, 1 July 1925, Page 6

MUD AND SLUSH

"ABSOLUTELY DISGRACEFUL"

A DANGER SPOT IN CRAWFORD ROAD.

"Our roads have been bad in past winters," said a very irate caller at the office of "The Post" to-day, "but never have they ever been quite so disgraceful as they are at present. Each winter we are told that 'this is the last bad-roads winter,' for years and years and years back, and each winter sees more mud and slush and positive danger to all road-users than did the last. The council is unwilling to go in for anything in the way of solid winter repairs in, view of the fact that cummer paving will necessitate the cutting up and carting away of metal laid down only a few months previously,, and so it dickers about with scarifying and rerolling. Two' days afterwards the roads so treated are seas of mud and slush, a week afterwards every pothole* is back in place again. Apart from, purely city area streets, Wakefield and Victoria streets, the Oriental Bay* Parade, and the like, which were mentioned in "The Post" a few days ago, let me especially commend to councillors the appalling condition of Seatoun road, scarifying and rolling not withstanding,'particularly in ita slushy length between the Kilbirnie Post Office and the foot of Crawford road, Coutts'street, Crawford road, and the upper part of Constable street. We have never had anything like it before, and we must truly hope that we will not have anything like it again. "Crawford road has been 'called down' a score of times since the Tramways Department commenced track renewal work; it is still thoroughly dangerous, and the marvel of it is that no one has been killed. Over and above the danger introduced by the' confining of two traffic lines to one side-of a steep hill road, deep water channels have been worn and scoured on the. roadway beside the tram lines; there is, I maintain, a definite danger of a bad smash from, this source. "Bituminous paving cannot be carried out during tho winter months, we know' that, but , concrete and brick-pav-ing can. Is there any intention 1 on the part of the council to move in this direction within the next few months ? There are, at any rate, not many signs of it. When the £200,000 paving loan was placed before ratepayers a few months .ago a great song was sung by. candidates for the council;. the lines may have' differed, but the tune was the . same, about the element, of time; the sooner the pavements were down the sooner would maintenance charges cease. It was apparently merely, a song of the moment, a popular hit, and now no one can remember how ifc want. "It lias been stated: that the council is erecting two more paying plants at Rongotai, or, raLher; intends to erect two more plants, but at the moment there are few signs of feverish activity out that way. No onti who drives upon .the city roads or crosses some of them on foot looks forward' to a repetition of last season's delay in getting paving plants under way. Weeks piled up to months last summer bdfore the Rongotai plant got gojng; is that going to happen again with the new plants?" Another "sea of slush" was mentioned; a length of five or, six chains of road at Lower Hutt, so bad that a long detour round the eastern part. of. theVrough was advisable, if not absolutely necessary. Smaller-cars, the caller maintained, ran an actual risk of being stuck in this "morass." Further up the Valley, too, there, were some atrocious patches, he said, and of the Day's Bay road he also spoke at length, but with such enthusiasm that the reporting of direct speech is inadvisable.