WIDENING BEACH ROAD.

New Zealand Herald, Volume XLIII, Issue 13307, 13 October 1906, Page 4

WIDENING BEACH ROAD.

The prompt action of the Mayor in taking steps to secure the future widening of Beach Road is one which will have the hearty commendation of the public as it has had the immediate endorsement of the Council. We have already the experience that when the founders of Auckland planned the city and laid i t out they made insufficient allowance for the expansion and development of traffic and business which has since occurred. They had no means of knowing what the future of the early settlement would be, but what was a most pardonable mistake on their part would be criminal maladministration on ours if we continued it, for we have a very clear and a very general idea that by the middle of the century Greater Auckland will contain a-quarter of a million people and occupy the whole of the isthmus. Owing to the configuration of the city and suburbs, Auckland is peculiarly lacking in road outlets, that to the eastward being jammed into Beach Road, unless it takes the circuitous and hardly less?- constrained route by Khyber Pass. Obviously, therefore, it is most necessary that provision should be made for widening Beach Road, and this, with the co-operation of the Harbour Board and the friendly consideration of Board lessees, is being attended to by Mr. Myers. We would again call attention,, while this is being done, to the (great desirability of some day bringing the Manukau Road by a viaduct across the railway to the lower level. There is no doubt, whatever that it can be done, when traffic increases and funds are available,, if the railway authorities are at all reasonable and if provision is made for it now. At the best it will be a difficult matter to obtain a good outlet on the northeastern corner, which should induce us to spare no effort to prevent in time the future throttling of traffic in that quarter. The next eastern outlet will be by the Cemetery Bridge, which is a long distance away, a consideration which must have great weight in any plan for improving the Parnell exit.