EVANS BAY ROAD

Evening Post, Volume CXXVI, Issue 81, 3 October 1938, Page 10

EVANS BAY ROAD

AS EXHIBITION ROUTE

FULL-LENGTH WIDENING

NO HARBOUR HURDLES

When the Ruahine Street controversy was in hand three months ago the widening of Evans Bay Road came in first as a side-line and later as something, in the opinion of the Automobile Association, of substantially more importance than Ruahine Street itself. Ruahine Street won hands down, for a battery of signatures was attached to a report to the City Council advocating this work and placing all others just nowhere as far as immediate attention was concerned. Ruahine Street formation is well in from the junction of Wellington Road and the further it goes the less motorists who travel to and from the city from the eastern suburbs daily are impressed with its possibilities as a main traffic route to the big residential areas beyond Hataitai. Motorists will not of their own accord run up a hill to get down the other side merely to justify an expenditure of £8000 on a ■ work they did not want, particularly when the new road junctions at the steepest pinch in Wellington Road on a bend which is practically blind. Ruahine Street was advanced as the one cure of the difficult problem of transport to and from the Exhibition, where the average attendance, according to an estimate given recently by the secretary of the Exhibition Company, may be 30,000 daily, with, of course, much heavier rushes on big days. The Automobile Association expressed doubts about that in positive fashion, and said that the solution lay in Evans Bay, as far as motor traffic was concerned. The association did not discuss tramway traffic problems, nor did tramway considerations enter into Ruahine Street advocacy, for it is not possible as a tramway route and is very much less suitable as a bus route than would be a route which did not climb a hill to get down the other side. "MIGHT AS WELL." In their report, to the council in July the five officers who supported the Ruahine Street proposal and placed others far in the future did! make mention of Evans Bay. They stated: "The Evans Bay Road will carry two lines of moving vehicles throughout its length. Where buildings exist and parking is bound to occur the road is now being widened so that two lines of moving vehicles can still pass. Even if the remainder of the road were widened at once it would not be possible to get four lines of moving vehicles along the road. However, this road should be widened later to provide footpaths and give more freedom to vehicles to pass, etc., and the Order in Council might as well be obtained at once." The necessary steps have been taken to obtain this Order in Council, and the present stage is that the plans have been placed before the Wellington ! Harbour Board, which controls that area of the foreshore and the harbour bed for some distance out from the road line, and which has agreed to the general proposals for the widening of the roadway to 66 feet over be^ tween the Patent Slip and Kio Bay, though there are certain minor points for adjustment. The plans have passed on to the Marine Department for final examination, so that the recommendation of the officers that authority "might as well" be sought at once has borne result. LARGER SHARE OF TRAFFIC. Counts of traffic on Evans Bay Road in the past have shown that it has not been a heavy traffic road up to the present, for it carries nothing like the volume which runs through the Mount Victoria tunnel, which route is about a mile and a half shorter, but the opening of the causeway road, leading directly from Kilbirnie Post Office and Seatoun Road (gathering the greater part of motor traffic from Seatoun, Miramar, Rongotai, Lyall Bay,6 and a big part of Kilbirnie) will alter traffic lines. The approach to Evans Bay by Kilbirnie Crescent and Wellington Road is such that only determined drivers will stick to it long enough to get round the corners (something like Ruahine Street as compared with what might have been done with a direct route to the tunnel), whereas when the causeway is completed and surfaced the seafront road will offer a level route free of any side traffic or delays, except on the comparatively few occasions when the way is closed by operations at the Patent Slip. If money can be found for the building of the 1500 feet or so of seawall between Kio Bay and the Patent Slip, this route will be at least a main traffic route when 30,000 visitors in cars and buses are all anxious to get home at the same time after a gala night at Rongotai. Six months' use of the waterfront road by exceptional, traffic may also serve to point effectively to the dog's hind leg approach to Oriental Bay from the city, by Cable, Chaffers, and Herd Streets. It is still possible to carry Cable Street directly through the corporation yard, as advocated by the Wellington branch of the Town Planning Association, and Exhibition traffic should clinch the argument, unless in the meantime the way is blocked by the erection of permanent buildings.