NATIONAL WORK—NATIONAL FUNDS

Evening Post, Volume CXVIII, Issue 58, 6 September 1934, Page 12

NATIONAL WORK—NATIONAL FUNDS

The ,City and Suburban Highways Board is concerned at the possible cost of erecting a ramp and overbridge from the new Thorndon reclamation road to its junction with the main north road. The cost is set roughly at £40,000, and a suggestion was made that the Highways Board should meet the interest and sinking fund on a loan to carry out the work. The Minister of Finance and the Secretary to the Treasury to whom this proposal was made held that the benefit from a ramp was local and the local bodies in the Wellington area already received their share from petrol taxation. Therefore they should meet the cost themselves. The City and Suburban Highways Board does not accept this, and intends to press further for assistance. The question is one of more than local importance. It raises an issue of principle.' To claim that the ramp is of local bene« fit is idle. It might just as well be claimed that any main road giving access to a big city was of local benefit. The ramp is essential, and it is just as essential for the people in the country doing business with the city as for city people doing business with the country. It' is not correct that the , local bodies receive their fair share .of the petrol tax. They receive the share legally allotted, but it has never been shown that this is fair. But the heart of the issue was reached by a member of. the City and Suburban Highways Board who said: If the whole of the money collected from motorists was expended for the purposes for which it is collected, there would be no need to worry over this ramp, and there would be any amount of money for the elimination of other level crossings. In balancing the Budget the Minister qf Finance is still counting on £500,000 from the Main Highways Fund. A fund which must make these contributions (and the motorists also pay the special petrol tax fpr generalrevenue purposes) obviously must be conserved by some means. In this instance the means appears to be by placing upqp either motorists or ratepayers of Wellington and the surrounding area the cost of a necessary work which is of national benefit. No one has suggested that the Main Trunk railway deviation is a local Wellington work. We do not see how the road access over this line can be deemed local. /.■