AUCKLAND HARBOUR BRIDGE

New Zealand Herald, Volume LXXV, Issue 23071, 23 June 1938, Page 17

AUCKLAND HARBOUR BRIDGE

Sir, —Most people would agree that a harbour bridge is a better solution for transport across the harbour than a ferry service. The question is whether the £2,000,000 bridge now proposed is, or is likely to be, financially justifiable. The present writer does not think it is. Because Auckland's population and harbour ferry traffic Lave been doubling every 10 or 15 years in the past is no reason for assuming that they will continue to do so in the future, in the face of the facts available and in the face of the inexorable law of diminishing returns. New Zealand's population has been increasing at a steady rate for 50 years or more, and that of Auckland nearly twice as fast, notwithstanding a steady decline in birth rates during the same lieriod. These conflicting trends cannot continue indefinitely, because of the law of diminishing returns. The crisis will come about 1941-1042, after which a decline in New Zealand's population is inevitable. Is it therefore reasonable for the advocates of the £12,000.000 harbour bridge, to base their estimates, on a forecasted 50 per cent to 100 per cent increase in ferrj traffic returns over the present-day figures? Would it not be much safer to face facts as they are, and base the cost of the bridge on the present-day traffic returns, which will only justify a bridge costing £800,000.° It is impossible to build a bridge resting on piers for this sum, but a fine floating bridge, either of steel or ferro-concrete, could easily be built for this sum, because such a design eliminates the underwater piers, which are the most expensive part of the structure. Thomas A. F. Stone.