LEVEL CROSSINGS.

Hauraki Plains Gazette, Volume XXXVII, Issue 5011, 9 August 1926, Page 3

LEVEL CROSSINGS.

TARANAKI WILL DO NOTHING.

ACTION OF THE COUNTIES. A set-back to the Main Highways Board scheme for the bridging of the worst railway crossings in the Dominion is the refusal Of the Taranaki counties to participate. If Tarapaki persists in this attitude it means apparently that while bad erpissingd are bridged elsewhere through the Dominion those in Taranaki will remain untouched.

The Highways Board scheme has been fully explained. The board ha,S had a. list Of the railway crossings on the chief main highways drawn with the crossings ranked in order of dangeij, and a number of the worst have been: selected -for bridging. The bulk of the cost is being borne by the Railway Department and the bOard, but the board is asking the local body in whose territory a crossing is situated to contribute proportionately tci its ability and to the uste made of the. crossing by local residents. Under this scheme a bad crossing neay Dunedin, for instance, is to be cut out at a cost of presumably £4OOO or so towards which sum "Waikouaiti County Council—ail impoverished county that should ndt exist .at .all has agreed to contribute £4OO in four yearly payments of The Taranaki Local Bodies’ Association, so far from helping forward this scheme, has taken the stand that local bodies should not contribute at all towards the elimination of level crossings.. This ,is extraordinary, for it seems to be the local resident, made careless by familiarity with a crojssing, who gets killed on it in the end. The killing of the local man happens at least as dften as ,the killing of that individual so poispnous to New Zealand local bodies!, the “foreign” motorist who! hails from sOmewhere over the edge of the pocket-handkerchief county area, and whose fate is consequently entirely immaterial to the. persons residing therein.

Taranaki is making a big mistake in turning down a! good sphejne—and a fair scheme—for gradually getting rid of the Dominion’s, worst railway crossings.—Dominion.