The Taranaki Herald. (DAILY EVENING.) WEDNESDAY, MARCH 25, 1914. PUBLIC WORKS.

Taranaki Herald, Volume LXII, Issue 144359, 25 March 1914, Page 2

The Taranaki Herald. (DAILY EVENING.) WEDNESDAY, MARCH 25, 1914. PUBLIC WORKS.

The time is fast approaching when the Minister of Public Works will have to prepare his schedule of works required by the country in anticipation of presenting the usual Statement and Estimates to Parliament. In the Taranaki electorates the. most important works are the Stratford-Main Trunk Railway, the Opuuaku Railway, and roads. There may bo a few public buildings ami telegraph and telephone extensions required, but these will not call for anything very largo in the way of votes. The Stratford-Main Trunk Railway ought to be pushed on as rapidly as possible from both ends, for it will not yield the full return it is capable of until the connection is made, when it is likely to prove one of (he most profitable lines in the. Dominion. The Opuuake line must be started, and that too ought to ho pushed to completion at the earliest possible moment, for the settlers arc very heavily handicapped in the maintenance, of the roads to carry the ever-growing traffic. That also is a line which will pay handsomely when it is completed, and for that reason if for no other it ought to be proceeded with as vigorously as the means at the disposal of the Minister will allow. When wc come to the question of roads it is more difficult to say which are the most important, for most of the settlers in the backblocks think it is their own roads that require making first. That, however, we think is a mistaken idea. The policy of the'Government ought to be directed to making thoroughly good main arterial roads, bridged where required and substantially metalled, even if it involves deferring the. widening of bridle tracks as feeders into dray mads. This ought to have been the policy of the Government 20 or 30 years ago; if it had been, an immense amount of money frittered away in temporary expedients to keep roads open for traffic would have be.en saved and settlement would have advanced more

satisfactorily than it has. Instead of following' that common-sense plan, the Liberal Government persisted in placing settlers many miles—even up to forty and fifty —ahead of a metalled road or a railway, with disastrous results in many cases. This is one of the inheritances of the Reform Government, which is now called upon to try and overtake settlement with metalled main roads. In Taranaki there are two such roads of transcendent importance —the Main North Road from Waitara to Te Kniti and the o'itini Road from Stratford to the Main Trunk Railway. Both are arn-'rial roads connecting the provinces of Taranaki and Auckland. Both have been settled almost along their entire length—over a hundred miles in each case—for many years. Both are practically impassable for wheel traffic for several mouths in the year. Both are fed by numerous by-roads and serve very indifferently large numbers of settlers. Both ought to have been metalled throughout ten years ago or even earlier. About eight years ago the I. beral Government determined upon a vigorous reading policy for the Tkick-blocks, which presumably would have included the metalling of these and other roads of little less importance. A little later this policy was initiated, and it was decided to raise a special loan of .£1,000,000 for the purpose, expenditure to be spread over four years. It was a commendable policy, but was never carried out. The first year something like .£500,000 was spent, the second year—wc write from memory—• about half that sum, and the third year it dwindled to very small proportions, and the Government lost, more than one seat through its failure to carry out that policy. The hack-blocks settlers became thoroughly disgusted and disheartened and determined to try what a change of Government would do for them. The results have not been all they wished, but there were good reasons why the Reform Government could not treat the back-blocks generously as it wished—financial reasons. The situation is now much easier, and the settlers are. now looking for substantial progress in the matter of reading. New Zealand’s credit is re-established and there should bo no difficulty now in raising a special loan of a million for back-blocks reading. We do not see why the expenditure should be spread over a definite period; the. work should be done as expeditiously as possible. There is no good reason why the road from Waitara to Te Kniti should not be metalled throughout in two years; it is simply a matter of finding the money and letting contracts for the work. The same may bo said of the Ohura Road, though the difficulties in the way of obtaining suitable metal are greater there. TJiore are other roads of not much less importance, such as the Okau-Mangnroa Road, but we hold strongly that before any very large expenditure is made upon any other roads the two firstnamed should he metalled thoroughly throughout. If the Government will undertake these and carry the work through expeditiously it may be assured of the very general support of the electors in the constituencies concerned, for roads and bridges are of more importance to them than anything else. Even laud tenure is of less importance, for land is dear at a gift if it is not well served in the matter of roads.