WHY NOT THE BEST ROAD?

Evening Post, Volume CXII, Issue 140, 10 December 1926, Page 8

WHY NOT THE BEST ROAD?

BROADWAY AND OTHER STREETS

HALF VERY GOOD, HALF HALFGOOD

WHERE CO-ORDINATION REALLY

SHOWS.

(By "Seatoun Motorist") "Why not the best road, instead of half a very good road and half a halfgood road? In other words, why not co-ordination in road paving as in other city activities, which, we are assured, is so marked a feature of all Corporation progress? jßroadway, the main road to Seatoun, is at last in the hands of the bitumen crews, and motorists, not only those who live at Seatoun, are pleased accordingly. Broadway has for many weeks been in the hands of the tram track renewal crews, and over this activity motorists sometimes scratch their heads in a worried fashion, not that they grudge the Tramway Department tl; c" benefit of improved permanent way, but that it does seem strange that lengths of track, apparently completed, are still roped off, forcing road users on to the particularly wild and' woolly macadam at either side.

WHY TWO METHODS?

As ratepayers as well as motorists they mediate also upon the true advisability of two distinct methods of paving evidently to be employed in this long stretch of important heavy and fast traffic thoroughfare, one style for the width of roadway between and a couple of feet or so on either side of the tracks, and another altogether for the sides of the roads.

Hot-mix was any amount good enough for the Hutt road, for main roads throughout the Hutt Valley and round the foreshore, good enough also for the twenty miles of city streets paved or to be paved under the last big paving loan scheme, but, seemingly, the Engineer's Department has failed signally in impressing upon the Tramways Department its virtues as a surfacing between and on either side of tram tracks. The Tramways Department, except in odd lengths of track work —part of Crawford road and Wakefield street, for instance—lays a mixture which has the advantage that it wears out a good deal more quickly and therefore ensures that everything shall be made brand new again much sooner.

TRACKS IN COUTTS STREET.

A year or so ago the tracks in Coutts street, leading on to Broadway, were taken in hand by the tramways paving organisation and made pleasing to the eye by the rolling in of a mixture of metal and tar, or bitumen and tar, laid cold. For about three weeks the surface continued pleasing and then commenced a ridging that would have brought reft-hot condemnation upon the heads of hot-mix pavera. There were faults and bad patches on bituminous roads, certainly, but even Thorndon quay stayed put for a good many months before creating the fuss it did. The ridging in Coutts street has now eclipsed anything that happened anywhere on hot-mix roads.

Broadway tracks are seemingly to be given a different treatment, a "penetration" surface such as was so heartily condemned a few months ago when the "to hot-mix or not to hot-mix" controversy was lively. In the lengths now in hand metal is laid between the tracks, tar or bitumen is poured over it, and the' Tramway Department's own road roller does the rest, or such of the rest as can be done before the roller settles down upon tho steel rails and can compress the mixture bo more.

PROOF OF CO-ORDINATION.

The regular paving organisation has been busy for a long time now in putting Island Bay Parade in order, and to the motorist and the property owner alike here is a real Godsend, but the Wellington motorist, "swanking" a little over Wellington's gpod roads for the benefit of the visitor beside him, is hard put to it to explain in a reasonable way why either side of tho road should be iv such fine order and the central strip only so-so. If the Wellington man is an enthusiast over good roads he must make some explanation, but he must be a good talker to bo able to convince his visitor that in spjto of ovidence to the contrary there, is really a splendid spirit of co-operation and co-ordination between departments in this matter of road paving as in all other matters.

When, however, as in Broadway, the visitor can see a full-sized hot-mix paving plant not half a mile away from the Tramway Department's cold-mix paving crew, proof of full co-ordination is not easily supplied.