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New Zealand Herald, Volume XXII, Issue 7416, 26 August 1885, Page 4

We are gald to see that the Harbour Board has spoken with commendable firmness on the necessity of providing access across the railway to Wynyard Pier. Attention having been specially directed to this matter by serious and fatal accidents, as well as by prosecutions instituted against persons who ventured to assert the right-of-way, the consideraof the same was entrusted to a committee of the Board ; and at the Board's meeting yesterday the report of this committee was submitted. It briefly recommended that the Government be informed that it is imperative that the access desiderated be provided as soon as possible. On the motion of His Worship the Mayor the words "as soon as possible" were deleted, and the words "at once" inserted in their stoad, and in this amended and more decisive form the recommendation was unanimously adopted. The Board is to be commended for the determination shown by it not to allow the rights of the public to go by default. It is simply intolerable, considering the large BQuis of money that have been spent on much less important works, that this long-established access to the harbour should have been cut off for so many years, without any eifort on the part of the Government to restore it. The danger was, if the question had been left much longer in abeyance, that the privilege of communication between the city and the Wynyard Pier would have been absolutely disallowed. Indeed this would appear to have been what the Government were aiming at in being so dilatory in taking any action to restore the interrupted access. At all events the stationing and paying for a man at the crossing place, not to direct the traffic, but to prevent it, and the fining of persons who ventured to assert their privilege, could apparently have no other meaning. But, whether this was or was not their design in taking such a precaution to stop the thoroughfare, it was high time that they should be mads to understand that the public rights in this matter must no longer be trifled with. The members of the Harbour Board have very opportunely rendered an important service to the community in the action they have taken, and have thereby become entitled to the gratitude of the citizens.