WAIPORI ENTERPRISE.

Otago Daily Times, Issue 20432, 12 June 1928, Page 6

WAIPORI ENTERPRISE.

TO TOT EDITOR. ' Sib—l read with interest in your todays issue the recommendation from the Electric Power and Lighting Committee to the City Council to rush a cable order through for five six-wheeled lorries and three trailer chassis. It struck me that, should this recommendation be adopted, the City Council will be perpetuating the one big mistake our city fathers made in connection with the Waipori enterprise, and that is the failure to construct a decent road, -incidentally this order would commit the city to an expenditure in the vicinity ot £IO,OOO. ... , Had better roads been provided when the Waipori scheme had proved itself, and when it was seen that its development would justify vast extension, the city would undoubtedly have saved thousands of pounds on its transportation bills. Good roads mean cheaper trans; port, and from time to time Waipori calls for heavy supplies of material and I consider that to leave the reading facilities as they are would be a blunder ot the first magnitude. That is what the recommendation of the Electric Power and Lighting Committee amounts to when, instead of expending money so to improve the road as to permit ot normal transportation, it proposes to commit the city to a heavy expenditure on special vehicles. This plant, when all is said and done, must have roads, and good roads at that, if it is to be operated economically. While the type of motor lorry that is recommended is undeniably an advance on the types in operation here at present, to assume that they are capable of hauling heavy loads continuously over the same track or road, without something more stable under them than Waipori mud, to stop them eventually burying themselves, is absurd. Even a layman can visualise the difference in the cost of operation between hauling loads, where it is a case of ploughing through axle deep in mud, and that of hauling over a decent gravel or macadamised road. , , The dirt roads or tracks round about the Waipori conservation area will not, during wet weather, carry any mechanically propelled vehicle for more than a few trips, and to transport material over them would be a costly operation, nlule any prolonged spell of wet weather would mean that bugbear of all construction engineers—a breakdown in tne supply ot material to the job. Of course there are those who will sa> that these vehicles will not need to stick to a defined road, but will be able to wander at will mss country. Admitted, but at an 0,., rating cost that would astound anyone without experience of operating motor transport. Ride a pushhike round the Oval and then cut across the reserve on the grass, and note the difference in leg power required. The same principle applies to road and crosscountry transportation. I must state i am quite confident that, with a good road even if its construction is costly—which I doubt, as there arc unlimited supplies of gravel close at hand—the transportation of material and plant to the new dam can be done much more cheaply than it can without a good road by means of six-wheeled motor lorries, or, for that matter, any type of vehicle at present on the market. I am. etc.. Motor Transport.