GREATER SYDNEY.

Otago Daily Times, Issue 19691, 19 January 1926, Page 10

GREATER SYDNEY.

SOLVING ROADS PROBLEM. (From Our Own Correspondent.) SYDNEY, January 7. One of the arguments in Parliament against the Government’s measure for the absorption by the city of Sydney of the big industrial municipality of Waterloo was that, while a Greater Sydney is an urgent and pressing necessity for the more economic and efficient administration of civic affairs, this proposal was merely a ‘piecemeal tinkering with the question, serving mainly to consolidate Labour’s forces in the City Council. It is not at all improbable that the new year will witness an earnest move towards the adoption of a Greater Sydney. The spectacle, for example, of about seven councils, each with their costly administrative staffs and machinery, on the north side of the harbour alone, is almost farcical, and their amalgamation will probably be again urged as one of the first steps towards this ideal. A Greater Sydney would probably bring within its scope, for a start at all events, about 20 municipalities embracing an area roughly of about 11 miles from north to south, and seven miles from east to west. A Greater Sydney, it is hoped, will incidentally mean better roads, for, while within the metropolis there are long stretches of excellent concrete over bitulithic roads, there are other roads which manifest strikingly the selfishness and the insular policy of councils which decline to do anything at all to what they regard as arterial highways, more especially since the advent of the Main Roads Board. The lack of a settled road policy in the past, in relation to municipal government, and as a proof of the need for municipal reform, is exemplified, for illustration, by the almost incredible fact that there is no road between the two great cities of Sydney and Newcastle, for the present roundabout tract cannot be described by that name. No other progressive country in the world would have tolerated such a position. Only now, through the Main Roads Board, is a road between these two points being pushed on, which means that before the lapse of many months there will be passing, directly between these two big cities, a large amount of traffic which hitherto has been denied this facility.