HIGHWAYS FINANCE

Hawke's Bay Tribune, Volume XXII, Issue 193, 30 July 1932, Page 8

HIGHWAYS FINANCE

NO MONEY FOR BACKBLOCKS MAY BE NO ESTIMATES AT ALL. TOLL SYSTEM OPPOSED. Wellington, July 29. The principle of introducing the toll gate system was opposed by a deputation from the North Island Motor Union and the New Zealand Master Carriers’ Federation, which waited on the acting-Minister of Public Works (the Hon. C. E. Macmillan).

While not objecting to the construction of the Paremata Bridge as a means of readier access to Plimmerton and Pukerua Bay, the deputation took exception to toll charges at the bridge on the ground that it would afford a precedent for similar charges elsewhere in New Zealand. Mr Macmillan said that he could hardly agree with the arguments. If the proposed road was a main highway it would be entirely different, but it was not a main highway; it was a proposal to provide better access to a particular district. There was a road already, and therefore it would be quite optional whether the new road should be used.

There was no proposal at present that, any Government money should be put into the scheme apart from the suggestion that relief labour should be subsidised from the Unemployment Fund.

The Public Works Fund was in such a condition that it could not find any contribution towards the scheme. “For the first time in the history of New Zealand,” he added, “wo may this year have no estimates at all, or at any rate they may be of such a nature that there will be no estimates for expenditure on the b ackblocks.”

He appealed, to the deputation to recognise that if it was desired to provide better access to the district it was right that users of the road and bridge should contribute to the cost. The deputation had not convinced him that, where a district was prepared to pledge itself to the construction of a road and bridge purely as a matter of access, the district effected should not be entitled to make a charge when there were optional routes. ,