GOOD ROADS.

Hawke's Bay Tribune, Volume XII, Issue 242, 26 September 1922, Page 2

GOOD ROADS.

CONTRIBUTING TO UPKEEP. A Washington (America) correspondent, discussing the declaration of the United States Bureau of Roads chief on the question of roads, says that a readjustment of taxes in the financing of future highways must be made before the State and Federal Governments can be expected to foster a permanent and national highway system. This, he says, is the belief expressed by Thomas H. MacDonald, the chief of the Bureau of Public Roads in the United States Department of Agriculture, regarding the outstanding difficulty in the construction of a great national highway transportation system, extending from coast to coast, and serving the greatest number of people possible. The Bureau of Public Roads estimates that of the six hundred million dollars spent for highway s the previous year, 33 per cent, was Federal aid and motor vehicle revenue. The remaining 67 per cent, came directly from or would eventually be paid from State or local taxes. A larger percentage of the taxation would have to be borne by the motor vehicle user and a lesser percentage from State or local taxes, was the opinion expressed by this official. “We are starting out to construct a system of highways such as no nation ever constructed before for the nearly eleven million motor vehicles now m use and the millions more to come. The nearest approach to our present programme is found in France and Germany, and the area of neither is as large, as Texas. This great undertaking is being entered into because highways are not a luxury but furnish a real servvice. have a real earning capacity, and have become a national necessity. For such an undertaking to be successful, financing, to care for maintenance, reconstruction, and new construction, should be planned for a long period of years in advance. Changes in methods of raising funds every few years, uncertainty as to whether funds will be provided, and periods in which funds are not provided, allincrease the final cost ot highways. Such a policy would soon bring any private business to disaster.” Development and increase in numbers of motor vehicles and the coincident need and demand for good roads have come so rapidly that methods of raising funds have often been expedient for the time being. Consideration has been given not so much to the joint distribution of the cost as to how the funds can be raised with the least controversy and the utmost ease. Then, too, the use made of the highways and the service Tendered by them has changed greatly within the past few years.