ROADING THE RANGES

New Zealand Herald, Volume LXIII, Issue 19511, 15 December 1926, Page 15

ROADING THE RANGES

THE WEST COAST ROAD. ORATIA CONCRETE SCHEME. IMPORTANCE TO DISTRICT* Further consideration is to bo given this week by the ratepayers of the Oratia riding of the Waitemata County Council to the scheme for laying three miles of the West Coast Road, from the Glen Eden boundary, with a nine-feet strip of concrete which will have macadam shoulders four feet wide. When the loan of £31,000 was authorised, the bulk of which was for the concreting of the Main North Road, £6OOO vms allocated to the Oratia riding, of which £SOOO was for remetalling the three-mile section in question. Further examination of costs caused the expenditure of the money to be postponed and it, is now calculated that if an additional £7OOO were raised the section, with the exception of 33 chains of steep gradients, could be concreted and that, allowing for the saving in maintenance, the annual charge would be less than 0.0 macadam. The section, which will come within a special rating area, ends about 20 chains from the junction of the Forest Hill Road. If the new proposal is adopted it will mark the first step in giving real access to the Waitakeres. Between the lower end and the Main North Road there is a section of a mile and a-half through the town district of Glen Eden, but in regard to this a concreting scheme is in the air. For the hill part of the road from the end of* the special Oratia rating area to the Karekare cutting, the sum of £ISOO was allocated out of the loan sanctioned, and an additional £SOO is available from the City Council as a subsidy. It is probable an early start will be made with extending the metal, which ends a little beyond Nihotupu. The eyes of all the settlements on the ranges are fixed upon the Oratia proposal, which, if adopted, may give a stimulus to road improvement in other quarters. A continuous concrete highway from the three-mile post on the West Coast Road from Glen Eden would bring that point within three-quarters of an hour by motor from Queen Street, for the total distance is only 13 miles.