A TOLL-BRIDGE APPROVED

Evening Post, Volume CXIV, Issue 64, 13 September 1932, Page 6

A TOLL-BRIDGE APPROVED

/By consenting to. the erection of a toll-gate the Acting-Minister of Public Works has made it possible for the Hutt County Council to carry out its plan and shorten the road route to Plimrherton. The plan is wholly commendable. It secures for the public valuable grants of land, it provides useful work for unemployed men in the district, and it avoids placing the btfrden of cost upon local ratepayers when a great part of the benefit will be given to road-users who pay nothing in local rates. The County Council has submitted a reasonable and workable scheme and has persevered, in face of unreasonable opposition, in securing Ministerial approval. For this it should.have the thanks of the local residents and of other persons to whom the Plimmerton area will be made more readily accessible. The Minister, for his part, has given valued help by taking a commonsense view of a desirable scheme. The criticism voiced by the chairman of the Automobile Club is as unwarranted as the opposition by the club executive has been unreasonable. "Our'worst fears are realised (he states) ; that is, immediately tollgates are introduced they run coincident with politics." Except that the Minister is the political -head of the Public Works Department, we cannot see where politics have entered into.the question. The Minister, was certainly not swayed by political considerations, but by a sound common-sense judgment. The chairman's further remark that "Mr. Macmillan had been an easy mark for the promoters of the bridge" is not creditable to him. It obviously indicates resentment and disappointment .that the Minister, who thought for himself, was not such an "easy mark" for the executive's guns as it had hoped he would be.