Wairarapa Times-Age TUESDAY, AUGUST 31, 1943. ANOTHER TUNNEL AND OURS.

Wairarapa Times-Age, 31 August 1943, Page 2

Wairarapa Times-Age TUESDAY, AUGUST 31, 1943. ANOTHER TUNNEL AND OURS.

JN Wellington, last week the Prime .Minister (Mr Fraser) was interviewed by a Canterbury deputation which asked that the Government should undertake the construction of a road tunnel between Christchurch and Lyttelton —a work the estimated cost of which in 1930 was £480,000. The Prime Minister said the project appealed to him, but on the suggestion of the Minister of Works (Mr Semple) who was present, added that a survey would be made and the Executive Committee of Construction would go into the question of cost. A report would also be obtained from the Railways Department (now operating a railway tunnel between Christchurch and Lyttelton), as to the effect the tunnel road would have on the department’s business.

The people of Canterbury have of course every right to seek facilities which will give their metropolitan and inland areas improved access to the. sea and will give Lyttelton, as one speaker put it, access to civilisation, but the people of the wide area, interested in the improvement of the present hopelessly inadequate transport facilities between the Wairarapa and Wellington will expect the present Government and any that may succeed it to stand up to the promise .made in the days of the late Mr Savage’s Premiership that a low-level tunnel through the Rimutaka will be pierced at the earliest opportunity. The promise was made in such terms that it is to be taken lor granted that, but for the intervention of the war, the Rimutaka

Tunnel would by this time have been well on the way to completion.

* The matter is one of which something 1 should be heard from the present Prime Minister when he speaks in Masterton next Tuesday evening. The case for 1 lie construction of the Rimutaka Tunnel has long' been rounded and complete. The outlay involved is considerable. The cost of the tunnel itself was/estimated some eighteen years ago at approximately £1,000,000, apart from substantial sums needed for the easing and improvement of lines on either’ side of the tunnel. Costs have risen in the interval (though some items of expense in. a work of this kind may be reduced by the use of modern machinery and methods), but so also have the working costs which will be reduced by providing adequate and efficient railway transport between these East Coast districts and the capital of the Dominion.

Careful estimates made in 1925 indicated that, from the standpoint of the Dominion, as distinct from that of the Railways Department, the cost of the tunnel would be balanced by savings. A great part of the case for piercing the hill barrier between the Wairarapa and Wellington is and has been, however, that a potent and tremendous stimulus would thus be imparted to economic development and expansion.

Speedy and efficient railway transport between Wellington and this and other East Coast districts will facilitate immensely the development of the total area on approved regional planning lines. Not only will rural areas be brought within convenient reach of the heart of the metropolitan area, but.much will be done to encourage that spread and decentralisation of manu•i'acturing industries which is coming more and more to be recognised as indispensable to satisfactory social and industrial development and to the expansion of population in conditions which will ensure ever-improving standards of life.

Taking account equally of the purpose it Would serve in relieving metropolitan congestion and putting Wellington City into effective touch with an important part of its hinterland, and of the impetus it would impart to the development of primary and other industries in provincial and rural areas now sparsely populated, the piercing of the Rimutaka obviously has, from a national standpoint, the strongest possible claim to be placed in the forefront of rehabilitation works to be put in hand as soon as the war is over. Probably there is no work of similar magnitude projected in any part of the Dominion which would contribute in an equal degree to national progress and expansion of a most desirable kind.