FUTURE OF CHRISTCHURCH.

Sun (Christchurch), Volume VII, Issue 1899, 16 March 1920, Page 6

FUTURE OF CHRISTCHURCH.

To the Editor of THE SUN. Sir, —Editorially and so far as Mr D. G. Sullivan is concerned the Tunnel Road is a “sure” thing and also the public are assured it can be accomplished in three years. A tunnel 40 x3O feet, over a mile and a-half long, is equal to a tunnel 20 x 15 feet and three miles long. This latter dimension is approximately the same as the Otira Tunnel, five and a-lmlf miles in length. The Otira Tunnel will certainly take 15 years to complete from the time it started, which was in 1907. The proposed Lyttelton Tunnel will be an undertaking fully equal to three miles of the Otira, so that one can look forward with confidence to the work taking at least eight years at the rate sustained at Otira. Port. Christchurch advocates, in common with everybody else, recognise the merits of Lyttelton harbour and no doubt if we can succeed in breaking the Government monopoly as regards access to it and so arranging matters that . it can be economically worked by motor lorries to wharf sheds, it will be an immense gain on the past. But has This Sun no vision at all? Can you see nothing at all in that undeveloped estate known as the Heathcote Estuary? If the Lyttelton Harbour Board had complete control of it and reopened it to navigation, can you see nothing in it as an improved property? The tunnel road ia the product of a third-rate brain. Anybody could conceive it, as it is superficially the obvious thing. But the person who overlooks the possibilities of the Heathcote Estuary in its relation to Christchurch and direct sea carriage, must be mentally blind. Perhaps it takes rarer foresight than The Sun apparently possesses to visualise the future —the estuary’s future I mean, ft’s a terra incog, but persons who have seen, the sea reclaimed in various parts of the world will have no misgivings as to the advantage this city would gain by waterborne commerce. The improvement of access to Lyttelton will be a great step, but it develops nothing. It. is questionable whether it will be the means of establishing a single new industry, but if the estuary is developed there is scopo for privately-owned shipyards, wharves, docks, timber floats and sites for divers industrial concerns of every description, to the benefit of our city as a trading centre. The Harbour Board should maintain the one port and develop the other as well, against the time when Lyttelton seems in danger of being crowded out. It’s simply a case of extending their business, all accounts under the same heading. ' In any case it ia idle to talk of “a narrow canal.” Who said it must be narrow? Make it, wider as trade increases. It. is admitted .that the canal scheme is difficult, but not for the reasons set out by its opponents. It is difficult because there are two possible routes, viz., via Sumner bar, and via New Brighton spit, with waterway straight across. The former lends itself more readily to a small seheme for coasters only; the latter scheme, with two large moles, would, in the opinion of many, bo the best, for a, first-class port. No detailed plans have as yet been drawn for this latter, and the scheme has not been fully discussed in all its bearings till nautical men and the eognoscenti generally have such a plan before them. The opinion expressed above may bo wrong, but, the writer does not think so.—l am, etc., v EX MARINER.