COST OF BAD ROADS.

Hauraki Plains Gazette, Volume XXXV, Issue 4724, 14 July 1924, Page 4

COST OF BAD ROADS.

AN AMERICAN EXAMPLE. A well-known American engineer tell* this story (says the New York Evening Post), and it’s the best good roads story ever heard. Me says one country was in great need of better boards. *The mud all through the district was so deep that it was impossible to use waggons, all travelling being done either on foot or horseback. In spite of the need there was little enthusiasm, for good roads when the Board of Country Commissioners met. Everyone was afraid of the presumed high cost and increased taxes. » A farmer in the back of the room arose. “Mr Chairman,” he said. “I ain’t fit to address a dignified meeting like this, but that’s because I’ve had to travel ten miles over the kind of roads you give us. I couldn’t drive.- I had to ride horseback. My boots are covered with mud; my trousers are covered with mud; my coat is covered with mud; my hat is covered with mud; and, if I hadn’t stopped to wash it,. my face would have been covered with- mud too. I look as if I had crawled here on my hands and knees, and I’m only half through because I’ve still got to go back with five dollars’ worth of groceries that I bought from Brother Fletcher, if there had been a good, hard road that my old horse could climb up and down with a load of lumber that I’ve got ready I would have bought 25 dollars’ worth and there would have been that much more money in town to-night.” And the mud-covered fanner Sat down.

Other speakers took up his case. They pointed out that good roads were an asset instead of a liability ; that they brought money into a town and greatly increased the markets. The result was that the commissioners enthusiastically passed a resolution to issue bonds enough to give them several miles of good roads. To-day the country is more prosperous than ever, school conditions are better, and the amount of traffic going in and out of the town has increased several hundred per cent. The old-time hostility to good roads by taxpayers is fast passing away. Mud holes may look chbap, but they are the costliest things any community can have round, in the, opinion of the Americans. Is it not time that New Zealand saw the wisdom of adopting a sound road policy ?