The Evening Star TUESDAY, JUNE 8, 1926. THE POFT CHALMERS ROAD.

Evening Star, Issue 19270, 8 June 1926, Page 6

The Evening Star TUESDAY, JUNE 8, 1926. THE POFT CHALMERS ROAD.

Conferences of local bodies in. and around the larger towns have been frequent since the motor traffic has made the upkeep of roads a problem. It is a matter which presses heavily on suburban and rural districts, in many of which the tradition lingers that rates must bo kept down td the minimum at all hazards, even if it involves unsatisfactory service. The indisposition to spend any more money than will enable a road traversing areas administered by more than one local authority to be no more than “passable”—a most elastic definition—has been pronounced since the establishment of the Main Highways Board. This body has now been -in existence for some time, and it must be becoming obvious to those relatively poor local bodies who have been neglecting road maintenance in the hope that a blend of compassion and compulsion will ultimately ensure the responsibility passing from local to general government that this waiting game is a losing one. The Highways Board is showing backbone in refusing the admission to its list of main highways of any fairly well used thoroughfare whose upkeep is becoming too expensive in the eyes of those who have hitherto provided the mono> for it. It was emphasised at the conference at Dunedin Town Hall yesterday by Mr A. J. Baker, inspecting engineer of the Public Works Department, that the Highways Board has already far more roads under its care than it has finance in sight for, and it will have to be very careful about adding any more. The Dunedin-Port Chalmers road is one of those for whose addition to the list of main highways strenuous efforts have been made. They have failed. Yesterday’s conference may be regarded as the recognition that the failure is final, and that entire self-help is the only path to follow. It will have to bo prompt, for public patience with the deplorable neglect of this road has evaporated, and there is no longer any plausibility in the past excuses for postponement of action. The position, indeed, is worse than it had formerly been, for the Government road grant which West Harbor Borough- has hitherto enjoyed has been withdrawn, and there appeared to be no response made yesterday to Mr Baker’s declaration that this grant had been fundamentally wrong, and that its stoppage was a commendable Government action. The only question now at issue is the proportion in which the various bodies concerned should contribute. Similar positions have arisen here before—for example, in connection with the Peninsula road and the Green Island road and arrangements have been come to, with or without recourse to a Commission. In the present case it is the Port Chalmers Borough which is the stumbling block. For some years past municipal government' there has suffered considerably through internal dissension, and not long ago this camo to a head. The new regime evolving from the upheaval has not yot had time to get under way, and meantime the cry appears to bo for cheese-par-ing economy, for which tho way in which tho ill-starred gasworks purchase is turning out seems chiefly responsible.

But it is evident that Port Chalmers Council will have to come into line with the other bodies over the matter of the road. The disposition of the Port Chalmers representatives at yesterday’s conference was to fall back on a Commission as a second line of defence. This may have been mere sparring for time, but further delay is at length unpalatable to the other bodies, and the representatives of the latter did not mince words in impressing on Mr Anderson and Cr Lunn that a Commission to allocate contributions would probably, almost certainly, afford no shelter at all to Port Chalmers finances, but entirely the reverse. And in truth the terms offered to Port Chalmers by the other bodies appear really generous. The proposed annual expenditure totals £BOO, towards which Port Chalmers is .asked to furnish only £IOO. The suburban mayor’s plea that soon after leaving Port Chalmers the road entered the boundaries of Waikouaiti County Council veas met with the proposal by the Town Clerk of Dunedin that the boundaries should be altered so as to cut out the wedge of Waikouaiti County Council between Port Chalmers and West Harbor. This seems to us eminently sensible, for the fewer the bodies concerned the less likelihood of delay and waste through disjointed effort. . Nor was Mr Anderson convincing when he found another excuse for delay in the proposed Port railway duplication and the possibility of road deviation in connection therewith. At the time of writing wo do not know what action the Port Chalmers Borough Council took at its last night’s meeting as a result of the afternoon conference. The report made to the council meeting by its delegates must surely have made it obvious that pursuance of an obstructionist policy will not only bo unpopular but damaging to the interest? of Port Chalmers. It cannot bo urged that the marine suburb is being worried by unsympathetic or grasping neighbors. The terms offered are indeed little less generous than the treatment the Port Chalmers Borough Council has received from the Otago Harbor Board for years past in respect of the contribution to the yearly deficit on the docks.