POLICY EXPLAINED

Poverty Bay Herald, Volume LXV, Issue 19550, 4 February 1938, Page 6

POLICY EXPLAINED

HIGHWAYS EXPENDITURE BOARD COMPLETES TOUR ROAD SAFETY FACTOR (Per Press Association.) WELLINGTON, this day. The Main Highways Board has just completed a visit to the Wanganui, Taranaki, King Country, Gisborne, Bay of Plenty and south Waikato districts. In the course of the trip, more than CO conferences were held with local bodies. Seen to-day, the chairman, Mr. .T. Wood, said that it was three years since the board last visited these districts and the improvements carried out were very marked. Some criticism had been made regarding the extensive improvement, work in hand on various parts of the State highways system, and it was found that local opinion did not appreciate the fact that approximately 70 per cent of rural traffic was confined to State highways. Measures sponsored by the Road Safety Council for improving conditions with a view to reducing the possibility of accidents were explained by the board in justification of the policy of realigning portions of the highways where the visibility and curvature are considerably below the standard necessary to carry the intense traffic now using the roads. Every detail of improvement was subjected to close engineering investigation before the final proposal was adopted, and experience had shown that in many instances a bold scheme of reconstruction was more economical than a modified scheme.

So far as possible, reconstruction was planned with due regard to further traffic development in the light of traffic censuses.