The Opunake Times. TUESDAY, FEBRUARY 5, 1895. LAYING OFF ROADS.

Opunake Times, Volume II, Issue 62, 5 February 1895, Page 2

The Opunake Times. TUESDAY, FEBRUARY 5, 1895. LAYING OFF ROADS.

The advantageous laying out of roads, throughout the Taranaki district, has not received the attention which it deserved from our legislators, surveyors and settlers. Of several trial routes, each of which would give equal grades well within the limit assigned by the Survey Department, may, for many reasons, be much superior to the others. In choosing a route the following conditions should be considered, viz.: Nature of soil and sub-soil, whether pervious or not; whether the general run of the road line has a northern aspect or not, the various slopes, involving greater or less side cuttings; and, lastly, what is very important in hilly unstable country, whether the strata slope down towards the centre of the spurs or the reverse. Should the strata slope towards the gully there will be constant expense in the maintenance- incurred by slips, both of cutting and of road bed, which becomes a very serious matter to local bodies with straightened finances. All these circumstances should be duly taken into account and the merits of the various routes balanced before a definite choice is made. When a surveyor is engaged laying out access roads subservient to the scheme of subdivision planned on paper in the head office, or in the case of a private surveyor who undertakes a contract to subdivide at a price per acre, in which laying off roads is included, and to each of whom the subsequent formation and road making is of no moment, these conditions are of minor consideration, as naturally their first idea is to make their work pay. All they can afford to do is to run a trial line in the direction suitable for the subdivision prescribed, and if this will give the grades required by the Survey Department when the road is formed, it is adopted regardless of the cost of forming and after maintenance. The result is that by neglecting a careful engineering survey prior to deciding on a line of road the local bodies have to expend in increased first cost of construction and after maintenance, an amount which would pay, over and over again, the additional cost of preliminary survey. Local bodies, although the most interested in this work, are never consulted, and very often only accidentally learn that a road is laid off by observing a survey party emerge from the bush. Later on, when settlement is promoted and the road comes to be opened up, they find to their cost that the surveyor has acted ou the geometrical principle, that the sborlest distance between two points is a straight line. Local bodies have seldom sufficient funds to warrant much needless waste of money in making heavy cuttings, and it is to their interest not to take over any road until they have ascertained whether it can be constructed at a reasonable cost or a better route chosen. If the road surveying were not included in the contract price per acre, but paid for separately, rigidly inspected, and amended if need be by a competent impartial authority, we should see fewer deviations made bjr the County Councils in after years* and the severance of small pieces from the sections abutting either side of the road would be avoided. This latter is a serious inconvenience to the settler, because the small plot of land thus severed is practically valueless to the owner If the road is fenced, and if it bo not fenced if is objectionable to have to leave gates unlocked, running the risk of passers-by leaving them open and the stock getting boxed. In connection with the West Coast Settlement surveys it is to bo regretted that the surveyors are not empowered to deviate, and close old roads, and lay out new ones in their stead without having to go through the formalities of either the Public Trustee Act or the Local Bodies Act. Even did it require a special clause appending to the Settlement Act, the cost and labor would be amply repaid in the improvement of the road lines aud consequent decreased cost of construction and maintenance. As it is, in numerous instances in Taranaki, the old road lines have been take# ijj utterly impracticable places, with the result that the settlers or local bodies have expended funds in forming roads over private properties to which they have no title, but are in the power pf the owners who may, if they please, prohibit sll traffic op the formation. (hereby al *

moat compelling the Board to buy the requisite laud at owners’ valuation. If we are not mistaken negotiations for the Ingahape Road, near Hawera, are still pending, after a duration of four years. In this case the road was laid out over an impracticable hill, considering the funds the' County Council have or are likely to have, so a deviation was made over the adjacent section, and now, to save the amount already expended, the Council must buy the laud from the owner at enhanced value. Much of this would be avoided if the Road Department of the Land Office existed in reality, and had a staff whose duty should be to see that all new roads were laid out in the best possible location as far as could be ascertained, and all old roads where unnecessary or unpracticable, closed. Of course, in after years when the bush is cleared, men who are now boys at school, will come along and wonder why “ this road was not taken there, and that loop avoided, &c.,” but at any rate we might see that no road is dedicated till it is found that it might be formed without prohibitive cost.