TOTAL OF £24,319,000 SPENT ON BUILDING HIGHWAYS SINCE 1922

Wanganui Chronicle, 2 November 1950, Page 4

TOTAL OF £24,319,000 SPENT ON BUILDING HIGHWAYS SINCE 1922

Paying a tribute to the foresight of the late Rt. Hon. J. G. Coates in introducing the Main Highways Act m 1922, Mr. J. W. Scott (Ministry of Works representative on the Main Highways Board) yesterday listed for Wanganui local body representatives some of the board's achievements. Since 1922, £24,319,000 had been spent on the construction and improven) lit of main highways, he said. Last year 94 per cent, of the £2,342,000 spent had been provided by the State and six per cent, by local bodies affected. In the last few years £2,600.000 had been expended in renewing bridging and the board was.faced with the renewal of some 600 bridges now .on the point of collapsing. Expenditure on these over the next five years was estimated at £7,000,000.

In 20 years, £29,000,000 had gone into the maintenance of highways. Some people considered highways could be better maintained by local bodies than by the State, but thil course usually led to differences in the standard of the highways. Also, it was better to have one central body purchasing road-building plant than to have many bodies doing so, with the consequent heavy expenditure and the waste of plant lying idle. Expenditure on highways for the present year had been limited to £l,750,00, said Mr. Scott, but the board hoped to get a further £250,000 made available in the supplementary estimates.

Hue to the curtailment of its finances, the board had been forced to refrain from declaring any further lengths of new highways this year, considering it wiser to maintain the ones already declared, he said. New highways could only be declared by the revoking of similar lengths of ex - isting highways.