CONTROL OF HIGHWAYS

Putaruru Press, Volume VII, Issue 276, 21 February 1929, Page 4

CONTROL OF HIGHWAYS

Simplicity may be a charming characteristic, but it is liable to get short shrift in a rude, crude world. Members of the Matamata County Council hotly debated at the last meeting the question of nationalisation of main highways, and the principal issue of the major premise was whether, under nationalisation, the county councils would retain control. As human affairs go, it does not seem difficult to foresee the outcome. Motor traffic is already contributing that extra amount of finance which enables the carrying on of the present system and standard of main highway work ; there is constant agitation for an increase of the contribution from this source. Some of us may think there is a danger of killing the goose that lays the golden egg, and reflect that America thinks it wiser to encourage motor traffic, and so ultimately swell the revenue on one of the soundest of all business principles, namely, a small return per unit, but a great total, rather than a heavy return per unit, and the danger of strangling purchases. But that is a point aside for the present. The position in prospect is that the traffic will pay a heavier contribution, and that the local bodies’ rates will be spent principally upon secondary roads. With the finances so arranged and disposed, it is in the highest degree unlikely that councils will be permitted to retain control. They will be relegated to the position and status of road boards, their functions being to attend to secondary roads, collect the dog tax and keep stray cattle off the highways. If amalgamation of al-ready-large counties is to take place, such as the reunion of Matamata and Piako, then we may as well hand the lot over to a State or semi-State body, for the community of interest will become less than it is now between distant parts of the same area. No doubt the underlying motive is to get a greater share of petrol tax and more value for money spent : it does not need much moral courage to predict th'at we will get neither.

The fact is that the Public Works Department and the Main Highways Board have already quite enough control. Not a shilling can be spent upon subsidised * work until and unless one or both of these bodies approve of the plans and specifications, for bridge and road work respectively. The Piako County Council is fully alive to the danger of control slipping from its grasp, and the chairman of the Matamata County Council very pertinently pointed out. in effect, that one department, that of health, had already become a bureaucratic overlord. Councils will do well to give farther consideration to a suggestion hailing from a county that has not been conspicuously successful in its administration.—Matamata Record.