BRIDGE PROJECT

Evening Post, Volume CXXV, Issue 144, 21 June 1938, Page 7

BRIDGE PROJECT

SWAITEMATA HARBOUR

: MR. SAVAGE'S COMMENT

C Commenting last evening on an Auckland suggestion that a bridge Jcross Waitemata Harbour was a more fieserving project than the construclion of a railway tunnel through the jlimutaka Hill, the Prime Minister Jthe Rt. Hon. M. J. Savage) said that Ihe Auckland Harbour bridge was inevitable. "The bridge must come, and fiot in ten years'" time, either," Mr. Savage added. "It ought to be up well before then." " Mr. Savage said that it seemed to iiim that a bridge would be a more Jconomical transport proposition than Ihe present method of crossing from £>ne side of Waitemata Harbour to the pther. It was only a question of whether other undertakings were not more important in the meantime. In 4ny case, it was very questionable Whether it would be possible at present to obtain the materials required lor such a bridge. Representations had been made to him for further investigation of the project. Fresh estimates as to the cost involved were fjecessary.

■; "We cannot start everywhere with big major works," Mr. Savage continued. "We have to take them in the order we consider most important. The trouble is that some people seem to fee opposed to every public work that is not in their own particular district. The Government has to look at these things from a national point of view, and make its own decision. When a start is made with the Auckland Harbour bridge I want to see the construction of it go straight ahead."