NO OTHER WAY

Evening Post, Volume CXIV, Issue 26, 30 July 1932, Page 12

NO OTHER WAY

The weakness of the case submitted by the Motor Union and the Master Carriers' Federation against a Paremata toll bridge lay in the failure to offer any workable alternative. There was a reference to betterment and a local rate, and a proposal that the bridge should be financed through the Highways Board as a~ secondary highway. But surely the deputation did not fegard these suggestions as practicable. There.will be some measure of betterment, no doubt, but a big part of the traffic using the bridge will not be beneficial to • the owners of property to which easier access is given. It would not be fair or practicable to demand that a small district should bear the whole cost. The weakness of the argument that the bridge should be constructed from Highways Fund was fully exposed in the statement of the Union President concerning the position' of the fund. The. deputation's case, indeed, was reduced to a plea that, because tolls were abolished years ago, there should never be another toll levied lest the whole system be reintroduced. Is it really necessary to. be so hide-bound that we cannot adjust conditions to circumstances? Can we not take any future proposals on their merits, or must we be shackled by a law of Medes and Persians which changes not? The Acting-Minister of Public Works showed more reason when he declined to join in killing a good plan which imposes taxation only in a way that no taxpayer should ever object to —requiring him to pay only if he accepts what is provided by the tax-