THE The New Zealand Herald. AND DAILY SOUTHERN CROSS. TUESDAY, APRIL 10. 1906. THE PARNELL BRIDGE.

New Zealand Herald, Volume XLIII, Issue 13148, 10 April 1906, Page 4

THE The New Zealand Herald. AND DAILY SOUTHERN CROSS. TUESDAY, APRIL 10. 1906. THE PARNELL BRIDGE.

The extraordinary attitude assumed by the Railway Department in the matter of the Parneli Bridge opens up a question of very much more than local importance. Put briefly it amounts to this: That whenever it suits the temporary convenience of the railway authorities to plant a bridge pier in the middle of a public road, they thereby set up a vested interest which lasts for all time and takes precedence of all subsequent public requirements. Forty years ago, when the piers were first | set up," Auckland was a comparai tively small town, and the outlet by way of Parnell was but little used. Not onlv was vehicular traffic along the road small, but electric trams were undreamt of. It was practically impossible to use any material but "wood in the bridge itself. Under all the circumstances it was the most natural thing that the piers should be erected without any objection from the local authorities and without any conception that in time to come the Railway Department would refuse to admit legitimate highway rights. The years pass by and Auckland grows, Parnell becomes a part of the metropolis. The Parnell thoroughfare becomes one of the great outlet roads of the city. Electric tramlines become a recognised institution in Auckland as in every other civilised centre of population, and the Parneli thoroughfare is tramlined as a matter of course. Iron bridges take the place of wooden bridges wherever the conditions demand them. It is necessary for the Railway Department to reluctantly duplicate the railway that crosses the bridge in order to accommodate the ever-increasing business of the Auckland system. What happens Although the tramlines occupy the entire width between the piers and although the piers quite obstruct the i use of the rest of the road by the constant vehicular traffic, making a j bottle-neck dangerous in the extreme, the Railway Department ac- j tually proposed to extend the piers j for another fourteen feet to carry the j duplication, making a veritable tun- j nel on one of Auckland's principal j thoroughfares. Through this narrow tunnel, tramcars, lorries, market waggons, timber carts,» vans, traps, buggies, motor cars, wheeled vehicles of every imaginable description were to struggle as best they could; all because the Railway Department considered itself possessed of pier rights to the utter exclusion of every other claim upon the roadway. When the local bodies energetically protested, they :vere met by the astounding, demand for payment of .part of the cost of constructing a single span bridge. In other words, the Railway Department setup a vested right to the pier-space and attempted to levy a sort of blackmail upon the local bodies in the form of ransom for the return to them of an unobstructed highway. Were this done by a private company we all know that an order of Court would promptly bring it to its senses, but the Railway Department being above the law can snap its fingers at equity and justice. In attempting to justify the attitude of the Department, that is of the Government, the Acting-Minis-ter for Railways made yesterday one of the most pitiable of defences. Yet it was the best he could do, for no fair-minded man could have failed to perceive how utterly unjust was the Departmental position and how deliberately extortionate the Departmental proposal. He told the deputation from the local authorities that he thought they overrated the danger, as though it were not already ever present in the mind of every driver using the road, and plainly to be increased tremendously by any extension of the piers. And he actually accused the local authorities of having " created the danger" by allowing a double line of tram track under the bridge. Our friends down South, who never see the peculiar aspects of Administration which are so commonly presented to us here in Auckland, will take it for granted that in some way or other our local authorities had deliberately gone out of their way to double-track this particular piece of road. They will not be able to believe that a Minister of the Crown would use these terms concerning a road which is double tracked along its entire length and upon which the danger has been created' wholly and solely because the piers have been allowed to remain after every inch of the road is needed for the road traffic, of which tramcars are an ordinary and legitimate and most important part. The Hon. Mr. Pitt bore strongly—having nothing else to bear upon— upon the " concession'' made by the corporation to the tram company, as though this assumption by the local authorities that the road was under their control was altogether unjustified. He dragged in the statement that the Government is constantly contributing to bridges and roads, when in this particular case nobody is asking the Government to contribute a penny piece. All that is wanted is that the Railway Department take its piers out of a city road where they have become a nuisance and a public danger, and where the Railway Department has absolutely no right to have them now the road is needed for roadway purposes. If the latest offer that the piers will be removed if the local bodies pay £500 is a fair one, as the Hon. Mr. Pitt asserts, we' would like to know what is the meaning of unfair. For who does the road belong to in commonsense, and by all ordinary custom, if

not to the public that is represented by the local authorities I Yet to get back their own road, to rid it of an obstruction that, has no standing excepting as a convenience to the Kailway Department, and that has completely served its purpose, the ratepayers of the city and suburbs are called upon to pay. As for Mr. Mitchelson's idea of getting rid of one pier, we would say. with all respect to the opinion of our ex-Mayor, that Auckland has been taking too much of the half-loaf when it is most justly entitled to the whole. The road is ours. 'We need it. The piers are intrusions now we need the road. And it is simply robbery to demand five hundred pounds or five hundred pence as ransom for returning our roadway to us. It is all very well for occasionally-visiting Ministers from the South to talk to

us about what we ought to have done and what we ought not to have

done with our own roadways, but we

j all know very well that no similar attempt would be made to extort money from any Southern local authorities under such flimsy and ab-

surd pretexts. It is an outcome of the spirit that was shown in the refusal to duplicate the Parnell Tunnel and in the failure to provide rolling stock for our pressing industrial requirements. Xor will it be until we stoutly insist upon fair and equitable treatment that we shall have the same rights as they have in the South—not even the right to the free use of our own roads.