BETTER MAIN ROUTE

Sun (Auckland), Volume III, Issue 906, 25 February 1930, Page 7

BETTER MAIN ROUTE

MAINTENANCE OF GREAT SOUTH ROAD CHEAP PERMANENT SURFACE At the end of eight years, the annual cost of maintaining the Papakura - Mercer section of the Great South Road will be greater than the total maintenance charges, interest, and sinking fund on the same stretch laid down in a permanent surfacing. This is the contention of Mr. A. Grayson, president of the Auckland Automobile Association, who considers it would be in the best interests of the Franklin County Council to surface the 16£ miles in a permanent manner. Moreover, the sinking fund would wipe out the loan in 20 years, while the road itself vrould last much longer. The county’s annual cost of the paving would amourit to £3,488. Of the annual maintenance, estimated at £1,340, the county would be required to pay £446, bringing the total amount up to £3,934. The scheme would include the concreting of the Razorback deviation, and the laying in bitumen or other surfacing of the remaining distance. . During the past four years the cost of maintaining the road over the Razorback has increased 55 per cent. In 1926 the county’s share was £1,223. being estimated at £1,900 this 3 r ear. At the same rate of increase, the county would pay £2,945 in 1934, and £3,990 in 1935, or more than the charges on a permanent surface. The present road is deteriorating rapidly, and in many places is becoming dangerous. The life of a road of the type proposed can be estimated as much more than 20 years, the period of the loan. The City Council’s section of Park Road, which was laid down in 1917, has caried a much greater volume of heavy and ordinary traffic than the Great South Road over this section, as has also Beach Road, laid down in 1918. After 20 years the Franklin County Council would pay only the annual cost of maintenance, estimated at £BO a mile.

Bus services benefiting Franklin County were using the concrete roads laid down by neighbouring bodies right to the county boundaries, but Franklin was failing to reciprocate and provide equally good access, said Mr. Grayson. Property values had grown, and the rates, owing to an all-round increase, now stood at £47,805, as against £34,552 in 1922-23.