PORT AND CITY.

Press, Volume LXIII, Issue 19178, 8 December 1927, Page 11

PORT AND CITY.

> TO THE EDITOR OF THE PBBSS. Sir,—ln the statement of ftho Prime Minister of December Ist dealing with matters of transport and appearing in The Pit ess of December 2nd we see another veiled move on the part of the present- Government to hamper and fetter provincial and private enterprise in this country. He says: "As preliminary consideration by a small Departmental committee has proceeded it has become increasingly dear that tho problem is one ot very considerable importance. A larger Dreliminary committee has accordingly been • set up consisting of the permaS heads P of tho Public Works Department, the Post and Telegraph Department, and the Railway and "Marino Departments, with all of which are associated the Government Statistician and representatives of the Prime Minister's Department ... . the scope of its investigations includes 1 review of road taxation by local bX and by the State, the cost of construction of roads including Coven men t subsidies, the construction and maintenance of mam highways, rnilwav construction and operation, harbour facilities and municipal trans-

port and road transport, both commercial and private.. . . And so on. We scent grave danger and embarrassment to Canterbury in the above barb-wire entanglement of bureaucrats in that our province can expect little encouragement for a tunnel road, the only way whereby we can obtain control of our own jetties at Lyttelton and set about reconstructing the port on modern lines, or for that matter encouragement of any other echeme which competes with Government enterprise. We do not look for a solution of the problem of terminal facilities in Canterbury in the advice or efforts of any Departmental officere simply because it i 3 a subject which they have never studied in the degree that Canterbury herself has, and because they are not financially interested in tho progress of our City and province. Does the Public Works Department, for instance, know or care anything about us getting access to the sea so long as their 171-mile-distant-domination of port and railway enterprise remains unchallenged? Or can anyone with the true interests of Canterbury at heart entrust the solution of our transportation problems to the Railway Department, which is vitally interested in not losing any means of dictating to or dominating provincial or private motor traffic enterprise? Is tho Railway Department at all likely of its own volition ■ to surrender its exclusive control of access to our wharves, which we built and paid for, and to help their riival—the Tunnel road—per medium of this colossal committee that the Prime Minister has just set up? No. It is a problem which we in Canterbury can and intend, we hope, to settle ourselves with the co-operation of the Government in removing the control of the jetties and allowing us free access as in Wellington and Auokland. AH the North Island main ports have free access to their wharves.- All the South Island ports are dominated by Departmental rails cn the wharves. Does anyone wonder why our ports are so backward. An enormous number of trucks and a huge capital sum of money is tied up in rolling stock in the South Island in order to maintain the present wasteful everything-into-and-every-thing-out-of-trucks system exclusive to the South Island, the only place in the world where there are no sorting sheds on tho wharves —a dire necessity impossible under the present Government monopoly. We have repeatedly urged that the Tunnel road is the only way to take advantage of the boons of modern motor transport for short haul traffic for which the railway is definitely out of date, and in this connexion it will interest your readers to quote briefly from a leading New York journal on the question of the opening of the Holland Tunnel recently, which is over two miles long and handles over 19W motor vehicles in each direction day under the Hudson River: —"The Holland Tunnel connecting New York and New .Jersey under the waters of the Hudson River will be opened today. It is anticipated that, an unceasing flow of automobile traffic will pass through. The strain on the_ ferries wul lio relieved. Communication will be made certain at all times, since neither fog nor storm can interfere with the tube's operation. The produce of Now' Jersey and all the country south of it will he able to pass uninterruptedly into the New York' market. The Holland Tunnel is not, however, merely a means of public service. It is, in addition, a tribute to the engineering skill of Americans. Many new problems had to be solved in its construction. The project was conceived just as horse-drawn vehicles were.passing out of general- use. It was designed and built for automobile traffic. Means of ventilation were all-important. Tho constant discharge of carbon monoxide would have made the tunnel a tomb without proper safeguards. Tho' ventilating system adopted a 70mile gale at the source, which is so distributed that it hardly seems more than a breeze within the tunnel. -Automatic signals register conditions along the entire length in a central control room. Other cities are studying the Holland Tunnel. A similar artery. is to connect Detroit and Windsor. • Oakland and Alameda, are to be linked in the same manner." Christchurch, too. must have its link with the sea forged in Canterbury by Canterbury. —Yours, etc., THE PORT AND CITY COMMITTEE. Christchurch, December 7th, 1927.