TRAFFIC TUNNEL

Evening Post, Volume CX, Issue 148, 20 December 1930, Page 10

TRAFFIC TUNNEL

A DIAGONAL APPROACH ON THE CITY SIDE PROBLEMS OF FINANCE It has been stated that an uncomfortable hitch has occurred regarding the financing of the work for the construction of the diagonal approach to the Mount Victoria traffic tunnel, and that the. Local Government Loans Board has, within a month of the completion of the tunnel work, refused to sanction a loan for the work. The Town Clerk, Mr. E. P. Norman, stated to-day that that was not correct, as application had not been made to the Loan's Board. The matter was still to be discussed, probably early in the Now Year. THE DIAGONAL APPROACH. The financing of the tunnel has been a difficult business from, the first, and the- way is apparently not yet clear. In 1920 the ratepayers authorised the raising of a loan of £160,000 for the work, a sum which at that time the voters understood would be sufficient to cover' the whole job, tunnel, approaches, and train tracks. .. The tunnel was put off and put off until the Access Commission gave the question a fresh lease of life, recommending that the work should be proceeded with and that a diagonal approach should be formed from the city side, a 66-foot roadway overall, from the intersection of Dufferin and Ellice streets to the intersection, of Brougham and Patterson streets, and thence on the southern side of Patterson street to th© western portal of the tunnel. As it was clear that £160,000 would not cover the cost of the tunnel, and the acquisition of properties and other works involved in this suggested diagonal approach, even with the assistance of the relief works loan and Government subsidy, the council proposed to cut the new road out for the time being, and that traffic to the tunnel should run up Ellice street, turn, into Brougham street, and again into Patterson street. TTnder the Access Commission's plan two properties would ba affected, the larger that of the Boman Catholic Convent, whereas under the roundabout council makeshift plan the property acquisitions would have be,en small, merely to round-off a corner or two. As this question eomes under the classification of "property and finance," which covers a vast range of committee subjects, the council has never discussed it in open, meeting and the public has therefore never been informed of the exact position, but it has been said that the difference in cost between the two approach schemes might amount to something like £20,000. The council's plans for saving this, or 'some other sum, were, however, rather interfered with when the Loans Board expressed the opinion—really amounting to a direction.—that the Access Commission's recommendations should not be doparted from, and that the diagonal approach should be formed. ■ Though the council was happy in that it obtained from Messrs. Hansford and Mills a tender for the tunnel work proper well below what had been expected, and was happy again in that the relief work loans (not requiring a poll of the ratepayers) were authorised by the Government, thus enabling the main approach works to be gone on, with, it may be stated with all confidence that there is nowhere in the tunnel account books any mention of £10,000 or £15,000 or £20,000 still tucked away. STREET WIDENING? If this work is to be gone on with another loan would seem necessary, even essential. Presumably, also, such a Joan would have to be raised by I Special Order, for the chances of a successful poll are regarded as so small that the council would hardly risk placing a proposal forward. The purchase of properties can scarcely fall within tho category of relief works, but wonders may be done under the heading of street widening, providing, of course, that the other authorities who must be consulted in matters of street widening, possibly also of town planning, give their consent. And there will still remain the problem of providing money for the laying of tram tracks over th© diagonal approach which the Access Commission recommended and the Loans Board favoured (and for which there does not at, present seem to be finance) and which tram track money, the ratepayers thought in 1920, was included in the vote of £162,250. There appears to be no doubt that tram tracks will go through the tunnel, but so involved have been the financial arrangements and so difficult the present tramways financial position that the date of the commencement of this work is decidedly uncertain. Though this question is not one of property or, distinctively, finance, it, too, has not been discussed in open meeting that the public may obtain a knowledge of the council's intentions. PROPOSED ADDITIONAL £50,000 LOAN. This question of tramway track provision is, however, quite apart from the street widening aspect (which may also have some application to western suburbs access) and from a suggested additional street widening loan of £50,000 (r-equiring no poll of tho ratepayers) to enable access improvements to be farthered, and to which proposal strong objection has been taken by an organised body of ratepayers. Street widening loans are so plainly within the category of "finance" that' discussions upon them are never held in open meeting. In any case if the proposals are approved by the Government the ratepayers are not called upon to vote nopn them, so the know-, ledge which they would gain from discussions in open meeting would be largely valueless.