NOTES AND COMMENTS

Dominion, Volume 37, Issue 17, 15 October 1943, Page 4

NOTES AND COMMENTS

As pointed out in a statement by the Wellington Ratepayers’ Association the steady deterioration of the city thoroughfares is becoming a menace to the safety of both vehicular and pedestrian traffic. The trouble, of course, is not confined to Wellington, lint is simply a state of affairs, fairly widespread, that has developed under the stress of war conditions. Abnormally heavy traffic, and the scarcity of labour for road maintenance, as a result of which routine work has fallen into-arrear, are the main aspects of the problem. The danger ahead is that if systematic repair work is not undertaken very soon, road deterioration will be rapidly accelerated when a certain stage of surface break-up has been reached, and traffic risks will bo correspondingly increased. Tills altogether apart from the question of future costs being increased by the delay in making repairs. The approach of summer weather should present a favourable opportunity for something to be done, but the preliminary selection of the more urgent works should be put in hand without further delay.

Only the prevailing extreme inadequacy of places of resort for servicemen and their friends in Wellington could justify the decision of the City Council to let the Town Hall to a private syndicate for 'the purpose of providing Saturday night dances as from the beginning of the New Year. The principle animating the opposition in the Council to this proposal, namely, that the Town Hall, being the property of the citizens, should not be commercialized, no doubt would have been fully endorsed by other councillors who voted in favour had times and conditions been normal. It may have occurred to those who have reflected upon the reported discussion at the City Council upon this particular matter that it ought to have been possible for a citizens’ committee, under the aegis of the council, to have done what has been left to a private syndicate to do. But no move in that direction appears to have been made.