The Times. Published on Tuesday and Friday Afternoons. FRIDAY, AUGUST 26, 1921. MAIN ARTERIAL ROADS.

Franklin Times, Volume 9, Issue 662, 26 August 1921, Page 4

The Times. Published on Tuesday and Friday Afternoons.

FRIDAY, AUGUST 26, 1921. MAIN ARTERIAL ROADS.

“We nothing extenuate,- nor aught set down in malice.”

We have referred more than once in our leading columns to the proposal to construct a motor rc-ad from one end of New Zealand to the other, but the subject is so large that it deserves to be viewed from, every possible angle. We, therefore propose to-day to deal with some aspects of the scheme we have not hitherto touched upon. The Minister for Public Works has definitely committed himself to the promise that this work shall be undertaken, but we are afraid that owing to inexperience he has scarcely given due weight to the arguments that will certainly be advanced against committing the country to so huge an expenditure in an hour of not merely local but world-wide fi-1 nancial depression. We do not know that any estimate of the cost has been made by the Public Works Department, and we do not imagine that their estimate would be of much value if made, unless read in the light of their usual practice of spending on a work from two or three times the amount they judged it would cost. But, in the absence of any official estimate, we have that of the private engineer who first proposed the road as a memorial of our victory. He put the cost at six millions, and is not likely to have erred in the direction of putting it too high. For Mr Coates to propose to commit the country to an expenditure so huge at a (time when the grants for neceesary public works have to be cut down to one-third of the usual amount voted for them ; in a year in which the revenue .decreased by three millions in a single quarter : in a year, too, in which the shrinkage of the returns from in-

come-tax will make it impossible for the Government to meet its ordinary expenditure without further exten-, sivo borrowing, seems to show a levity of mind scarcely befitting a responsible Minister. That he should have yielded to the clamour and persistence of motorists by making them if,promise he will be totally unable to carry out is doubly unfortunate, inasmuch as it will exasperate them and embarass his colleagues at a time when their every energy should be devoted to enconomising in public, expenditure and stimulating prcchrCfe'' lion.-

A road such as contemplated would be merely a luxury. It would, enable a few motorists to go joy-riding, but. would not add one iota to the prosperity of the Colony. • It would hotaid, but injure the State Railways, already unable to pay interest on t'neir cost. And if it were begun it wouid be abandoned unfinished because a population of a little over a million would find itself unable to bear so heavy a burden added to the already almost intolerable taxation, Government waste and extravagance has, placed upon them. If there is really any desire in the minds of theGovernment to improve the national position by a roading policy their path is marked out for them clearly enough. Let them devote their energies and what little money will be available during the forthcoming lean years to opening the roads jthat feed the railways. By doing so they will not merely facilitate and cheapen, production but increase the dangerously falling railway revenue.