THE KING'S HIGHWAY

Ladies' Mirror, Volume 3, Issue 4, 1 October 1924, Page iii (Supplement)

THE KING'S HIGHWAY

TAXATION . . . ROAD COSTS . . . CAMPING AND THE CAR . . . THE ART OF CAR BUYING

p OM all parts of the country there has come of late a babel of voices on the subject of motor taxation apropos of the annual license fees in the Motor Vehicles Bill. In some quarters one finds advocates of taxing motor vehicle owners solely through a petrol tax; other critics demand that all the money wanted shall be collected solely by tyre duties; while yet again we have Sir James Gunson leading Auckland local body advocacy of a horse-power tax, plus a tyre tax. In the midst of these distractions it becomes easy to overlook the fact that the immediate need is to obtain for the Highways Board the additional £150,000 a year needed for it to function fully as intended under the Highways Act. The fees in the Motor Vehicles Bill are not heavy, and they serve the purpose of getting things going and enabling the local bodies during the coming summer season to push on with the good work of surfacing and otherwise improving their roads. A system of good roads, even if it is the product of an imperfect system of taxation, is surely a thousand times better than sticking in the mud for more years, pending discovery of the ideal method of raising the money to pull us out of it.

o o o Auckland’s predilection for concrete roads at £IO,OOO a mile and Wellington’s much-boomed Hurt Road in bituminous concrete at £7,000 a mile have started an itch among local bodies for expensive pavements as the only alternative to very bad macadam.. There is a marked tendency in many quarters to regard with contempt any proposal to lay the less expensive types of bituminous surfaces, and many engineers regard the technique of these as not worth studying seriously. This is a mistake that may cost the country hundreds of thousands of pounds, and leave us with a few miles of needlessly expensive road, when by a more intelligent expenditure we might have had amply sufficient surfaces over double

or treble the distance for the same money. An experienced engineer lately in America tells me we are crazy to aim at laying roads of the same type that carry the traffic in and out of the hugest cities in the United States. Even with the enormous volume of motor traffic there the mileage of concrete and bituminous concrete roads is very small relatively. All our traffic for many years to come, this gentleman considers, can be perfectly well accommodated on the Taranaki type of surfaced road at a fraction of the cost of the other. The real nut for us to crack is to learn how to lay these cheaper roads efficiently, for wrongly gone about a sorry job can result, as some districts already know. Properly laid they are excellent.

o o o With summer on the wing towards us, one’s thoughts fly to the great outdoors, and there are signs that the motorists of New Zealand have caught the lure of the

open spaces, and are developing a taste for motor camping tours. In America, motor camping has a tremendous vogue, and it is said that no town west of the Mississippi considers itself up to date unless it has a public camping ground on its outskirts. Some of these are of colossal proportions. A copy of the new American A. A. “Camping Site Manual,” for instance, gives details of thousands of camps, the largest being that at Denver, with an area of 160 acres, providing accommodation for 1,000 cars and 12,000 people, and equipped with store and meat shop, rest houses for both men and women, tables and benches, a movie theatre, dancing hall, two race tracks, a billiard room, soda fountain, water laid on to each camp site, showers, tent floors, electric lights, laundries, barber shop, police station, motor repair shop, and finally an aeroplane landing ground for still more up-to-date people than motorists.

o o o Our American cousins are extraordinarily gregarious in their habits, and the community camp with an indiscriminate mob huddled together in a heap will scarcely appeal to the average New Zealander as the ideal of life in the open. However, there is a happy mean between paddling one’s own canoe entirely and camping in a mob, and it would be quite a good idea for the automobile associations to co-operate in compiling a list of attractive spots along the main highways at which motorists are free to camp. On an unfamiliar road one will often pass a good camping ground a little early for ending the day’s run, thinking there will be just as good further on, and then, after traversing an unattractive stretch of country, end up by pitching one’s tent in the dark on a spot that has nothing whatever to recommend it. Often, too, beautiful spots remain unknown a little distance off the main road. If a . list of recommended camping sites were avail-

able it would be quite easy to map out the day’s run to arrive at one at a pleasant hour for leaving the trail for the day, and maybe enjoying a swim in the bathing pool which the manual shows as being near by, or trying one’s luck on the evening rise on the trout stream by the camp, or yet again bagging a bunny for the pot. A little booklet that put one wise to all these things along the road would mean for many all the difference between a comparatively dud outing and a holiday that lingered fresh and fragrant in the memory for years afterwards. o o o One point in which the Americans excel is in compact and handy gear for the motor camping trip. One sees very little of their handy gadgets on the market here, and the time seems ripe for some . enterprising business houses to specialise in these lines. A compact outfit occupying but little stowage room on the car and containing all one requires is a sine qua non for successful camping on a tour. Later on, if the Editor permits, I hope to provide Mirror readers with a few hints and tips under this head from my own experience.* o o o A great deal is heard about teaching motorists to drive cars properly, but one looks in vain for any disinterested institution to teach them how to buy cars wisely. A business man connected with the motor accessory trade told me the other day that he really thought it was a waste of time helping people to make up their minds about the car they should buy. He was frequently consulted by persons who knew that his knowledge of ears was wide and that he had no axe to grind in boosting any particular make. As one instance of many he quoted a recent experience in helping a friend to decide between two makes of light twoseater English ears between which he explained he was wavering. An hour or two was spent in going over the points of the two cars, pointing out the features that accounted for the difference in price and the strong and weak points of each, all of which led to a fairly obvious conclusion as to which of the two would best meet the requirements of the ease. A * This article will appear in our Christinas — Editor, The Ladies’ Mirror Motoring Supplement.

week or so later, running across this same man, he was asked which he had bought. —er,” was the answer, “I didn’t buy either. I got a seven-seater Blank”— mentioning a heavy, high-powered American car. This fatuous vagueness of mind in setting out to buy a ear appears to be by no means uncommon, from all one hears. o o o While it is almost hopeless to attempt to help individuals so erratic as in the above case, there are one or two simple points that waverers between different makes of cars should bear in mind. A most important consideration is service. If the agent for one ear carries a big stock of spares, and the other agent carries next to none, it means that an accident or breakdown in one ease might involve only trifling expense and delay, whereas in the other a most formidable bill for locally-made parts might result, in addition to which one would have to submit to the loss of use of the car for quite possibly a lengthy period while the work was in hand. A handy way for waverers to make up their minds is to

go to a used ear shop and find out which makes bring the best price second-hand or which sell easiest. A satisfactory sale later on is going to be a considerable factor in the total amount of one’s motoring bill. o o o In view of the clamour of the local bodies over the motor taxes, we motorists should not overlook the fact that the 129 county councils with which this country is blessed are woefully expensive institutions. No less than 10 per cent, of the moneys the counties handle goes in administrative expenses, whereas the boroughs do the work on 4.1 per cent., and the Public Works Department on 5 per cent. The costliness of the counties arises from the fact that there are far too many of them, and overhead expenses are multiplied at a prodigious rate. The waste of the system was recognised long before motor traffic came, and in the twenty years before the war reform was promised twelve times in Governor’s Speeches to

Parliament, but to this day nothing has been done, and thus has developed the crisis in reading’ matters. o o o If the counties were run as efficiently as the boroughs a sum of no less than £125,000 per annum could he saved in county administration expenses. This would he sufficient to lay a bitumen surface on 1,000 miles of main road, to pay interest at 6 per cent, on it, and to wipe off the principal in fifteen years. As the counties squeal so much when there is any talk of Parliament putting their house in order, the politicians find it easier to get the money by taxing motorists. It is worth noting that the taxes under the Motor Vehicles Bill are estimated to produce just about the same amount as is wasted by county inefficiency. We shall get local government reform when somebody makes as big a. noise in favour of it as the county councillors make against it, and the people to make the noise ought to be the motorists who are having to pay the piper. Quite a big noise will be needed, but it will be beneficial in many ways. Sancho.