GOOD ROADS

Evening Post, Volume XCVIII, Issue 40, 16 August 1919, Page 9

GOOD ROADS

MOVEMENTS IN THE NORTH.

(BY TELEGRAPH.—SPECIAL TO THE POST.)

.. AUCKLAND, This Day. " Good road " movement is now attracting considerable attention in the Auckland province, and in no district is the public interest in the question more marked; than in the northern portion of the North Auckland peninsula. Tho "Roadless North" bids fair to soon become a misnomer so far as several of the northern counties are concerned. An interesting summary of the progress that has been made in these counties in the inauguration .of up-to-date reading schemes has been supplied in an interview by Mr. Vernon Reed, M.P. "The success of the butter factories in the North, the proposed early opening of a local farmers' co-operative freezing works, and the prospect of an early completion of railway communication with Auckland, have encouraged local bodies to embark on county roading schemes of a mag-| nitudo unthought of in the past," said Mr. Reed. He remarked that roading had I always been a difficult problem for tho northern local bodies, this being largely due to there having been so much nonratable lands held by the Crown and Native ownership. The position in this respect was not much better to-day, Mr. Reed stated, but the local bodies now felt that good transport facilities had to be given in order to meet the requirements of the immediate future and to induce more production from the occupied lands. The Bay of Islands County has a scheme to metal 70 miles of roads at an expenditure of as many thousands of pounds. The work was dne to commence at once. The programme' would take six years to complete. Wharigaroa county ratepayers have also approved of a loan of £10,000 for a main road passing through that county from the Bay of Islands. Further north, the western portion of the Monganui county had recently sanctioned a road loan of £54,000 with which to tar-seal some 50 miles of road radiating from Kaitaia. This scheme, it was estimated, would take the county six years to carry out. In Hokianga county a former scheme involving the expenditure of about £12,000 was nearing completion. On the south of the river provision was being mr.de for the expenditure of £40,000. Other schemes were also pending. The total expenditure mentioned, Mr. Reed observed, amounted to over a quarter of a, million sterling, and tho maximum time for expenditure was six years.