MAIN HIGHWAYS.

Otago Daily Times, Issue 19550, 5 August 1925, Page 8

MAIN HIGHWAYS.

COUNTY COUNCILS DISSATISFIED. TWO 1 BOARDS WANTED. (Per United Press Association.) CHRISTCHURCH, August 4. County councils of the South Island, to judge by those in Canterbury, are not satisfied with the operations of the Main Highways Act, so to-day representatives of the councils in Highway Groups 13, 14, and 15 were called together in conference by the Canterbury Progress League to talk the questions over. There were 65 delegates present, and Mr F. W. Furkert (chairman of rho Main Highways Board), Mr F. Langbein (district engineer and chairman of the Highway Groups), and Mr J. D. Bruce (counties representative on the Main Highways Beard) were also present. Mr \V. K. MacAlpino said that the main dissatisfaction was because there was only one board. The councils were bound down, and there was not enough elasticity. The South Island was unanimous for a board fer each island. There was no complaint with -anything else but the Act. It was too big a job for one board to administer the Act in both islands. In Canterbury the roads were made without Government assistance, but a new class of traffic had come along that councils could not cope with. The councils were not prepared to go on increasing the rales just for one section of the motoring public. Mr Furkert said that if the delegates had waited for the report of the conference to be disseminated the money spent in bringing the delegates together would not have been wasted. Members: We paid our own expenses. Mr Furkert; I am not concerned with who paid them. The report, I think, would show you that a lot of your troubles would bo eliminated. The conference decided to recommend the Government to alter the maintenance subsidy from £1 for £2 to £ for £, not because it was thought the best thing, but because of the state of the finances. Not one of the South Island representatives at the conference had suggested a board for the South Island. The Railway Board controlled both islands. Motions were can-led :n favour of subsidies for reconstruction and maintenance being not less than 50 per cent., and that -lovenue received under the Act be apportioned between two islands in proportion to the number of motor vehicles in use in each island. Mr Bruce said that the board had passed a resolution that all money raised in the South Island must be spent in that island. He did not want to press the South Island to borrow at the rate of the North Island, for personally ho thought that in the North Island this was being overdone. There were at present 12 amendments to the Act before the House, the nature of which he could not divulge to the conference, hut he could inform it that there was little doubt that a £ for £ subsidy for maintenance purposes would be soon forthcoming.