CONCRETE OR MACADAM ROADS?

Manawatu Herald, Volume XXXIX, Issue 1660, 11 January 1917, Page 2

CONCRETE OR MACADAM ROADS?

IN a letter to the Wellington Post, Mr E. T. Moore urges concrete instead of macadam roads. He says: “The advent of the motor has made the macadamised road obsolete, but local bodies do not seem to realise this patent fact. Motorists! are also to blame for not coming forward and offering to submit their vehicles to special taxation to provide for the class of road required. It would pay every motor owner to contribuate £lO per annum per vehicle for highways. At present the waste on tires alone costs him more than double (his sum, while the uncovered macadam road racks his machine to ruin. The commercial motor owner would find it pay him to contribute £SO annually per vehicle for a concrete track to work on, yet he is too blind to see (he wisdom in (his policy. He spends hundreds of pounds annually for tires and loses hundreds more in depreciation on his vehicles, because he has not sense enough to divert such a small part of this waste to a fund to provide money for concrete roads, which arc absolutely essential to his own welfare. While we have this blind policy on the part of both motor owners ami local bodies, and nobody in Parliament wise enough to grapple with the problem of motor taxation for the improved roadways that are necessary, we must suffer travelling through ruts, mud, and dust, and endure (he rapid destruction of costly rubber tires and equally rapid depreciation of valuable motor machinery.”