£260000 FOR MAIN HIGHWAYS.

Manawatu Times, Volume XLVIII, Issue 2393, 11 June 1924, Page 7

£260000 FOR MAIN HIGHWAYS.

WHY NOT £298,000. AND FIND £38,000 FOR GORGE ROAD. Main road projects, totalling £260,000, have been approved by the Main Highways Board, including a great bitumen highway from Waikanae to Tokomaru. Works totalling £50,000 are still under consideration. The Main Highways Board, which met at Wellington ten days ago, approved of a general scheme of reading works for various parts of the North Island. Waikanae to Tokomaru £148,000. Taking the projects in the order of their size, a great bitumen highway is planned from Waikanae to Tokomaru, costing £148,000, of which the board and the local authorities will pay half each. The length will b» 46 miles, and the width IS feet, Tlie work will be spread over OhreC! years, and the board’s expenditure for the current financial year will be £24,668. Auckland Motorists Fortunate. An anomaly in motor taxation t* revealed by the projects. Auckland motorists are to get eight miles of concrete road, costing £63,0 iS, of which sum half will be found by the local bodies and half by the Highways Board: Wellington has just completed 55 miles of bitumen road at a cost of £40,000, which sum is being raised wholly by a special tax on Wellington motorists, the Highways Board colnributing nothing and the local bodies nothing. No special tax is to be paid by the Auckland motorists for the eight miles of concrete road bordering on their city. ii Or Small Protests.

Next in order of value is a 6i-nule concrete paving job from Oakley Creek to Henderson Town Board out boundary in Auckland, the local authorities participating being the Avondale Borough, Waitemata County, New Lynn, Glen Eden, and Henderson Town Boards. The width will be ISft. and the expenditure £60,000 of which' the Board will find half, the contract being spread over two years, £15,000 to be spent this year. At yesterday’s meeting of the Kairanga County Council, Cr. P. J. Small was reading these extracts from a recent issue of a Wellington journal. When ho had finished the above paragraph he put the newspaper clipping down and stood to action. Where Is the District Highways Board? Cr. Small wanted to know where the District Highways Board was. Ho was a member (a position which ho wished to relinquish in favour of the new county chairman, lvi.r fc>. it. -Lancaster) of the Board which had only held one meeting since its inception and that was some time ago. “It is ail very welt for the Main Highways Board to advise that a form of agreement would shortly be -submitted to the Council setting out the conditions' under which local bodies would maintain the respective highways on behalf of the Board, but Kairanga County was in the dark as to what assistance the Main Highways Board intended to give the Council to maintain its roads. “We claim that our roads carry the heaviest traffic in New Zealand, at any rate, in the North Island. We have thirty miles of main roads. What assistance are we to be given to maintain them?” “Eight miles of concrete reading are to be constructed at Auckland, which the Main Highways Board will pay half the cost of f63,OTS, and presumably, a third of the cost of maintenance. Yet we are saddled with the whole cost of construction and upkeep of the Gorge Hoad, one of the greatest highways in the country.”

A member: Kairanga only contributes pro rata, 10 per cent. v The engineer: The Palmerston North Borough Council’s levy is 27 per cent, Cr. Small: I was speaking for the district, not merely for Kairanga County. The Hutt Hoad. A good deal has been heard of the Hutt Hoad, continued Cr. Small, but it would appear that although administered by a Board as in case of the Gorge Road, a tyre tax was levied on motorists, A special Act had been passed providing for an annual license fee, and the amount thus levied from motorists was sufficient to meet the cost of upkeep and interest on construction.' Main Highways. Roads taken over by the Board and clasified as main highways relieved local bodies of a third of the cost of maintenance and half the cost of construction. On the motion of Cr. Small it was decided to take the matter up with the Main Highways Board, with a view to the claslficatlon some of the Kairanga County roads as main highways.