“WRONG METHODS.”

Manawatu Standard, Volume L, Issue 175, 23 June 1930, Page 2

“WRONG METHODS.”

(To the Editor.") Sir, —If any of your readers -will take a walk along Te Awe Awe Street they will see a good example of false economy, or if not due to the desire for economy, an example of road repair which must be criticised at once. This street, for half its length, has been for several years full of pot holes and the method resorting to is to fill them up with loose metal, or else cover the whole surface of the road on that part containing the pot holes with metal. The result is that the road surface remains like a river bed for months till that the metal disappears, a large part of it to each side of the road, swept there by the motor traffic. When the'metal has disappeared the pot holes, as could only be expected, appear again, only a little worse than ever. How metal, especially metal with no binding material, can be expected to remain in the pot holes is more than I can understand. There is nothing for it to grip at the bottom of the holes. One might as well sink an iron dish in the road surface, fill it with metal and expect the metal to stay there while motor traffic passed over it. How many times this street has been re-metalled 1 would not be sure, but a great many times. It is a palpable waste of money to attempt to cure the trouble in this manner. There is only one way to overcome the trouble and that is to break up the whole surface of the road in the affected part before any metalling is clone, and had this been done in the first instance a great deal of the ratepayers’ money would have been saved and users of the road would have had a decent surface to pass over. I don’t know who is responsible for this but it is high time this method ceased I should like to add that the road is at the moment going through the same treatment as before.—l am, etc., Palmerston North, Q hl D. June 21, 1930.