CAPE-TO-CAIRO MOTOR ROAD?

Poverty Bay Herald, Volume LIV, Issue 16622, 13 April 1928, Page 2

CAPE-TO-CAIRO MOTOR ROAD?

A NEW AFRICAN SCHEME There has been a good deal of discussion in South African transport circles of late concerning the possibilities of substituting a Capo-to-Gairo motor road for the once-projected Cape-to-Cairo railwav.

Heavy and swift motor traffic has so wonderfully developed since the time when Cecil Rhodes fired the Continent’s imagination with his scheme for the railway that many competent judges consider the goods carrying could be accomplished as swiftly and competently by occasional caravans of lorries as by trains. An enormous tourist traffic, too, would ensue were it possible for the British small car owner to drive through France to Marseilles, arrive three days later at Alexandria, and then proceed to run clear through the middle of Africa on a well-built and tended motor track, with an hotel every hundred miles or so. The advocates of tho Cape-to-Cairo motor road point out that the cost would need only a fraction of the capital needed for buiiding a railway, and .that motorists would not be impeded by straggling cattle and wayfarers afoot as a road for native traffic would be built alongside. Sir Abe Bailey, the millionaire mineowner, is enthusiastic about the idea, which may take definite form in the near future.