NORTH AND SOUTH

Press, Volume LXIII, Issue 18905, 21 January 1927, Page 6

NORTH AND SOUTH

ROADS OF BOTH ISLANDS. MB T. GEE'S VIEWS. Mr ILomas Geo, who recently^compleUd a thiee weeks'tour of ttolSorth Xd, has returned to Chris church mly convinced that, although he South Island is badly worsted in the 1 of concrete and bitumemsed • -t ;* nevertheless the bettor oil reading systems are taken into consideration s t€rd 1 "™ bad taken ncl-land City. Ho had intended to ro further afield, but the roads were £ bad that he was forced to return to Auckland Coming south again, he p A a"ed through Hamilton Taupo Ro orua, Tauranga, Whakatane, Opotilu, Motu Gisborne, Napier, and reembarked at Wellington for Lyttelton. It will thus be seen that ho covered a considerable stretch of country. "The best roads I experienced were in Taranaki," he said "and the worst were undoubtedly in the Auckland Province. On the east coast the roads were dreadful in parts, while .from Auckland to Tauranga they were also in a very bad state. Between Atiamuri and Taupo it took me all my time to get through, and I was lucky in being able to do so, because the followin" day it rained so heaivily that all traffic was completely held up for five davs afterwards. ''ln Auckland City and some distance out of it there are some splendid concrete roads, but when you get into the back country the conditions are often appalling. In many places a motor has to be driven in dry weather between the grooves of tho roade, tho axlo just being high enough to be clear; in wet weather it is frequently necessary to use a jack tc raise the wheels and scrub has to be laid down, while in other portions it is imperativo to chain the wheels. "Our roads in Canterbury are a good deal better than they are supposed to be. What we mean when we say that a road is bad in this province is that it contains pot-holes, or is rough with shingle; what they generally mean in the North Island is that a road is full of very much bigger pot-holes than ours and that it is soft. In the North Island when the weather is wet it is impossiblo in many instances to motor any distance, whereas in Canterbury one can get about in any kind of weather at all.

"I have to admire the enterprise of the various boroughs and counties in the North Island in applying for tho Mni.n Highway Board's subsidy; in this respect the South Island is sadly lagging behind. I saw miles and miles of bitumenised roads in the North Island constructed by this means, but so far as memory serves me the only such road I have seen in the Canterbury Province, or the whole of the South Island for that matter, is the section recently constructed for the Paparua County Council on the Main, South road." j