UNMETALLED ROADS.

Lyttelton Times, Volume XIX, Issue 1086, 8 April 1863, Page 2

UNMETALLED ROADS.

TO THE EDITOR OP THE LYTTELTON TIMES.

Sir, —During a recent visit to the Peninsula I was much pleased to see the improvements made'iu roads at Pigeon Bay and in and about Akaroa These roads are nicely formed but not metalled, and will do very well if timber drags, dray.s, &c' artonly used upon them when the roads are perfectly dry ; if, on the other hand, they are used for wheel or sledge traffic when they are wet and soft, they will soon be transformed into mere quagrnire These roads can only be used at present, so far as ■wheeled vehicles are concerned, for local traffic, and should the inhabitants tear them up every winter it would be too much to expect the Government or in other words the rest of the province, to put them in repair again each summer. Now I would beg to suggest to the inhabitants of, and members of the Provincial Council for, these and similarly circumstanced districts, whether it would not be well to endeavour to get an ordinance passed in the Council giving the inhabitants of districts in which there is no through traffic for wheeled vehicles, the power at a public meeting of the inhabitants called for the purpose, of passing resolutions determining when their roads shall be open and when closed against wheel and sledge traffic. Posts might be placed at convenient positions at the sides of the roads, and when the inhabitants had resolved that they should be closed, a rope or chain might be stretched across them to the posts. I have been induced to forward you this suggestion by having seen in another province roads somewhat similarly circumstanced destroyed by one or two of the inhabitants, to the great detriment and inconvenience of their neighbours, and the worse than useless expenditure of public money. P. E. WIUGHT. Lyttelton, April 6, 1863.