South Canterbury Times. MONDAY, NOVEMBER 22, 1880.

South Canterbury Times, Issue 2397, 22 November 1880, Page 2

South Canterbury Times. MONDAY, NOVEMBER 22, 1880.

It must be gratifying to the owners of town properties, especially those who contemplate building, to observe that an effort is being made from within the Borough Council to render the street levels at least intelligible. No practised eye is needed to perceive the whimsicalities of the method that has - been adopted in laying out the town of Tiinaru. Nature has done its share by moulding an uneven surface with deep gullies and steep banks, but human ingenuity so far from smoothing down these difficulties has only added to the complications. We are not linding fault with the fact that the town lias been laid out after the fashion of an Egyptian puzzle or a modern maze, full of confusing windings and turnings, with streets diverging and colliding, and breaking oil; suddenly, but we merely refer to the levels. These levels, we presume, were originally intended to be perrnenent, but unless water can be taught to run up hill and the draiuage

as well as shv.pliness of the town is to be entirely neglected, they will hardly be tolerated. We have hoard it stated that that the town lias suffered from three different sets of levels, executed by different engineers. If so. the cause of so many streets being deformed rather than formed is apparent. Each engineer instead of walking in the path of his predecessor has adopted a level of his own, and lienee the confusion. This, we understand, explains away the partial burying of the new Post and Telegraph Unices. It is extremely undesirable, however, that the absurdity of a town with a conflict of plans should be continued, Every week new and substantial buildings are being erected, and the proprietors ought to be protected against loss and inconvenience arising from future street alterations. The citizens of Dunedin and other centres that we could name have suffered in this way, and the error, so clearly demonstrated elsewhere, ought to be avoided in Timaru. The modelling and remodelling of streets is an obstruction to traffic, a source of expense to the community, and a loss t<» the owners of property. To continue forming, cutting, and shingling streets and footpaths before a proper system of permanent levels has been laid down is sheer folly. The town has suffered sufficiently from construction on the fragmentary principle. We do not blame the P.orongh Council, for its members have bad to abstain from many necessary undertakings, because of the pecuniary embarrassments of the mnnioipality. Now. however, that they are in funds, patchwork ought to cease, and the preparation of permanent levels for the whole of the borough ought to entrusted to competent bauds. The money thus laid out will be beneficially expended, because it will be the means of preventing the harassment and waste that ensues when streets and footpaths arc left to amateurs and the work of construction and reconstruction, planing down and filling up, goes mi from year to year without any prospect of arriving at a state of completion.