FEELING THE PINCH

Sun (Auckland), Volume III, Issue 685, 10 June 1929, Page 8

FEELING THE PINCH

Money Needed for City Streets FEW city departments have this year escaped the financial pruning knife, but streets are to receive an extra £IO,OOO as well as special grants for essential works. Even this money will be insufficient to meet all requirements when the 92 miles of streets added to the city by Tamaki and Avondale are attended to.

A COMMON belie! exists among ratepayers that once a street Is laid, that is the end of it. Nothing could be more fallacious, particularly in a city possessing the growing population and the expanding traffic requirements of Auckland. When a street is constructed in this city it signals but the beginning of the work. True enough, when the first foundation is laid and the street made ready for traffic, the back of the job is broken, and steady attention will keep it in adequate repair. But there is a recurring charge of something like £IOO,OOO annually on the street works of Auckland, and with the amalgamation of Tamaki, Avondale and Orakei with the city, the financial strain has been increased. It was an agitated engineering department and an anxious works committee chairman who prepared the streets estimates for the current financial year. Last year £90,000 was allocated and a few hundreds over that amount spent. It was clear, however, that this grant would be insufficient to meet the demands of the 1929-30 period, because two years ago the allotted £90,000 was overspent by more than £14,000, and last year’s curtailment was recognised merely as a temporary relief on the city purse. BAD SUBURBAN ROADS Standing charges, which it was impossible to reduce, reached about £27,000, which left £63,000 to maintain 275 miles of streets and 550 miles of paths. Comparatively little attention is needed for the 28 mile of paved highways and even for the 147 miles of tar-sealed roads, but the burden of the 100 miles of macadam roads, many of which have recently been added to the city, has stretched the pouch of streets expenditure to its limit. For tar-sealed roads alone an expenditure of £40,000 is needed in Auckland. From observation and experience it has been found essential to give tarred road surfaces an average dressing every four years and tarred footpaths a dressing every five years. Almost double that treatment and rotation is necessary for the first four years on newly-executed tarring jobs. Assuming, then, that one-quar-ter of the city’s tarred streets and footpaths were dressed every year, the cost would fall a few pounds short of £40,000. The admission to the city of Tamaki, Orakei and Avondale added 92 miles of streets, the great majority of which are macadamised, and de-

scribed by the council committee as being in a desperate condition. Special attention must be given to the. roads in the Mission Bay subdivisions and to the foptpaths in the Avondale district if they are to carry their proportion of traffic. Since the city council began its paving programme and general streets improvement policy in 1924 with the £710,000 loan, the increased use of motor-cars and lorries and the increased speed at which they travel have added materially to the upkeep of the city highways. The original schedule of street works was too much for the original loan, and the extra 10 per cent, allowed by law was borrowed. This additional £70,000 is still intact, and, the engineers estimate, will be sufficient to complete almost the whole of the streets schedule. Factors which should not be overlooked are that at the time the bulk of the work was executed—l 926-2 costs were heavier than when the estimates were made, and that in some instances the standard of work performed was better and more lasting than that provided in the schedule. CONCRETE PAVING COSTS It is established to the satisfaction of the city engineers that the concrete paving of Auckland streets has fully justified itself. The interest charges have been heavy, but in streets which required a fresh surface annually a few years ago, the coming of the concrete surface has almost eliminated maintenance charges for several years. The ex-city engineer, Mr. W. E. Bush, in fact, claimed tha the council’s streets improvement scheme had resulted in making Auckland one of the best roaded cities in Australia and New Zealand. In addition to the £IOO,OOO estimate for streets this year, about £20,500 is granted by the City Council for special jobs like Orakei Bridge Road (taking a special grant of £2,440, and £4,860 from the big loan), Gladstone Road (£4,650), Balfour Road (£1,300) and other specified undertakings. Money for streets has an urgent call just now. City funds grow increasingly short, while traffic demands become alarmingly great. But, as the committee of the council properly points out, expenditure is necessary to retain the benefits achieved by past expenditure. “Unless a sufficient allocation is made to allow for systematic repairs,” it. says, “a large percentage of the loan money expended on secondary streets will be wasted.”