DANGEROUS BRIDGES

Kaipara and Waitemata Echo, 25 August 1921, Page 2

DANGEROUS BRIDGES

IN WAITEMATA'COUNTY

Recent accidents on bridges in the Waitemata county have made the public fairly familiar with their state of disrepair, and a member (Mr Oliphant) of the Council waited upon Hon. Coates and asked him for a grant of £3,500 to put them in order.

Mr. Oliphant explained that his riding had sanctioned loans of £1500 for road metalling purposes, and there -were ten bridges along these roads on which appeared notices warning traffic of the unreliability of the structures. To better this State of affairs it was proposed to spend a sum of £7000 to be raised on the basis of £ for £ subsidy. The riding would raise its portion of £3500 by loan.. Five of the bridges, most of which it was proposed to turn into culverts, were on the Auckland-Helensville road, and were a danger to heavy traffic. They were all wooden structures, many years old. Mr. Coates: How is it that the expenditure for these bridges is not a matter for the whole county? Mr. Oliphant: It has been the policy for a number of years to leave it to the separate ridings. Mr. Coates: Your policy i s unreasonable. Every county must have a definite policy. To go on in this fiddling way with no concerted policy for the whole county is not i.i the best interests. I suppose there will be a general demand from the ridings for similar assistance? . The assistant engineer replied that that was correct. The Minister added that the member for the riding would be notified of the amount of money that the Government would grant for expenditure in the riding, and the district engineer and the county engineer would then have to determine the allocation, and he hoped he would be relieved of any further responsibility other than approving of his engineer's recommendations. There would be only a certain amount of money available, and that would have to be allocated among the more important works.