THE TUNNEL UNDER AUCKLAND

Sun (Auckland), Volume II, Issue 417, 27 July 1928, Page 8

THE TUNNEL UNDER AUCKLAND

PROMISES made with the most cheery buoyancy have a habit of fading when a watchful Minister of Finance tightens the purse strings. There is therefore nothing to evoke surprise in the response given by the Prime Minister to Mr. H. G. R. Mason, member for Eden, to whom Mr. Coates has stated that it is now impossible to indicate when work on the railway tunnel under Auckland will he started. Mr. Mason had inquired because the construction of the tunnel, with its quicker access to the heart of Auckland city, means much to the populous northern suburbs, and to the towns that are springing up outside the city borders. The proposal is inseparably associated with the whole question of suburban transport, as its completion, now so distant, would put the railways in a much better position to compete with trams and buses. Any hint that it was to he started in the immediate future would have ruled out the need of tramway extensions to the north, or the initiation of costly bus systems; but these considerations go overboard now that the Prime Minister has definitely stated that the job will not he one for the immediate future. While there are critics about like Mr. W. D. Lysnar, who airily questions the need of deviations that will save thousands of pounds annually in haulage; of workshops that will raise the efficiency of the whole railway system, and of up-to-date station buildings that will popularise the railways by removing the familiar atmosphere of shabbiness—and all because Mr. Lysnar ardently advocates the completion of the fabulouslycost ly Napier-Gisborne railway, through some of the most difficult and sparsely-populated country iu New Zealand—one is constrained to confess that Auckland is lucky to have even- a new station within definite prospect. But the removal of the tunnel proposition from a definite place on the schedule must nevertheless be regretted, particularly as the whole schedule, accoMing to past plans, is already a long way behind time.