SOUTHERN ROADS.

Manawatu Standard, Volume L, Issue 138, 10 May 1930, Page 8

SOUTHERN ROADS.

WHY PLANS WERE DELAYED. CANTERBURY CRITICISM RESENTED. (By Telegraph.—Special to Standard.) WELLINGTON, May 9. The Canterbury Progress League’s criticism of the main highways policy, which has been widely published, ia resented by those concerned, because, ae they demonstrate, it is a serious misrepresentation of the position to state that a large unexpended credit balance in favour of the South Island exists in the highways accounts. The real position is that for several years after the inauguration of the main highways system, with its national basis of finance, great difficulty was found in getting most of the South Island local bodies to provide the proportion of expenditure necessary for road improvement. Unlike the North Island, which readily raised loans to secure its proportion of the main highways funds, the southern authorities took the opposite view and the southern portion of the fund accumulated for lack of approved plans for expenditure. However, the Main Highways Board adopted special means to meet the southern position and made advances from its account to the extent of the local bodies’ proportion of the expenditure, subsidised by the Highways Board. These advances are being repaid. The long delay in getting effectivo action in the South Island enabled plans to be prepared in a most systematic way, and, contrary to the view of the Canterbury Progress League road improvement, has been better organised in the South Island than in the North, one feature being tlie provision of a permanent surface for tho whole main highway from Picton to the Bluff, many sections of which have been completed.