HAWKER STREET

Evening Post, Volume CIX, Issue 56, 7 March 1930, Page 8

HAWKER STREET

(To the Editor.) Sir,—Cannot something be done to stir the city authorities into tar-sealing Hawker street without further delay? The dust nuisance is, and has long been, something appallirig. This thoroughfare carries a; constant stream of through motor traffic to and from the eastern suburbs, and it has apparently never1 occurred to the powers that be that the Palliser road-Shannon-Moeller-Hawker streets .route is a main traffic artery comparable to Constable street or Oriental parade, and is tho shortest way into the city from Hataitai and Upper Roseneath. It is utilised, ■moreover, as a testing ground by, I should imagine, every garage mechanic in Wellington. They swoop recklessly up here in their thousands. Even the cheery little corners leading into Palliser road hold no terrors for them, and if there W a more perilous spot for motorists on a busy street in Wellington, lead me to it. This also is another urgent case for the City Engineer. I write, however, merely as a humble pedestrian. My motor rides are few, but recently a friend drove me many miles over the highways and byways of some of our fine suburbs, and never once were we off the bitumen. I noticed with pained, amazement that even little side streets in those fortunate districts, notably Kelburn, were beautifully bituminised, and it was only when we returned to Hawker street, worming our way through its tteming tr»flic, that we came to earth—literally! I was deposited on my doorstep grey with dust and purple with indignation at the injustice to us Mount Victorians— the Cinderella ratepayers of Wellington, for I believe poor Austin street is even as we are. Then I have often wondered at the long-suilering congregations of St. Ckac-

ard's Church, that they have not mada some united protest to the City Council long before this, for to clamber up our rocky and wholly atrocious footpaths and be smothered in grit in the process is a penance entirely unmerited. This is the only church I know of in the city—or in the suburbs, too, for that matter—that cannot be reached via a bituminised roadway, and this in spite of it being on a main thoroughfai"; and virtually in the heart of the city. I might add that the sight of our beloved Governor-Genera* and thft Lady Alice climbing Hawker **veet, an\\ more often than not, through *\otorist<; dust clouds, was lons a famfcir one \r focal residents, for Palliser rood, int<s which Hawker street leads, was one of Their Excellencies' favourite walks, and with reason, for it is the vantage ground for some of Wellington's loveliest harbour vistas.—l am, etc., F.B.T.