ROAD HOARDINGS

Evening Post, Volume CXXIII, Issue 108, 8 May 1937, Page 10

ROAD HOARDINGS

MORE AND MORE

DIGGER, WIDER, HIGHER

Some years ago the City Council, as the local authority controlling the main Hutt Road between Th'orndon and Petone, made. an effort to have all hoardings removed from the road reservation, and, for a time there, was a fairly good clean up, for as terms and contracts expired the hoardings were taken down. Now they are back again, bigger, wider, and higher, shifted back from the road reservation on to pri-vately-owned land on the hillside and growing in a spreading crop on. the railway frontage, particularly between Ngahauranga and the city. In a year or so a new railway slogan may be opportune, "Travel by train and see the harbour."

Both the City Council and the Beautifying Society have made representations upon this question of spreading bigger and better hoardings along the main entrance to Wellington, but without receiving satisfaction. Perhaps the modern brilliantly-coloured illustrative hoarding is an improvement upon the natural harbour and distant hill colours, generally in plain greens and blues and greys, but the uncultured travellers who use this road daily and the visitors who gain their first impression of Wellington have not yet reached that stage of artistic appreciation. ■ : Another matter upon which representations were made was that a strip of ten feet or so should be left between the cycle track and the reclaimed land between'the ramp approach to the new tunnel and the roadway, so that a simple scheme of planting could be introduced to make up for the loss of the harbour view and to screen the buildings to be erected on this new ground, but the request was not met, and this length of'the main. approach road is developing into as ugly a length as will be found in New Zealand. In all due course the inner side of the ramp to the tunnel mouth will, an assurance has been given, be covered with spoil and planted with shrubs and greenery, but here arises a real doubt —what will be the use of planting shrubs if more buildings and more hoardings, bigger, higher, and wider still, are going to hide the greenery? If there have to be hoardings,, it is a pity that they cannot be concentrated to hide the hotch-potch architecture that marks these new Hutt Road buildings and so leave most of the outer -roadway open that the untutored road user may indulge in his foily of wanting to look across the harbour. -. Possibly the Ngahauranga-Thorndon length of the Hutt Hoad is past remedying as far as building style is concerned, but a, new length of waterfront road will soon be opened, between the Thorndo:i road ramp and the northern end of Waterloo Quay. It may not be ■considered possible to make ■provision for a planted strip, but it may very well be possible to require those who build to this new. road frontage to comply with some minimum of.design and dignity. , ; ... ; V ;;, , ,■;