1955: Who Will Build the Roads?

November 27, 2018

By AHNZ

But without Government who will build the roads?

1955, citizens on the North Shore are told their infrastructure is not a council priority so they set to work themselves!

when residents of Williamson Ave in Belmont, told by the Takapuna Borough Council that their street wasn’t high up in priority for footpath work, took it on themselves, with material supplied by the council, to do the work. Saved the borough £300, and laid a quarter mile of footpath.- NZ Herald, 5 August 1955; Timespanner

Today such initiative might land you in court. People these days don’t think like that anyway. Their means of production are not to do the work but to bleat and suggest and complain and protest for Big Brother to do it.

For example, the local Western Leader propaganda paper not long ago recorded some local West Aucklanders who had been complaining for 7 years or more trying to get the state to make them a footpath.

A walkway was approved by the former Waitakere City Council in 2010. It would have run from the corner of Sungrove Rise and Nirmal Pl to Sunshine Boulevard.

A frustrated west Auckland community is demanding to know why a long-promised walkway has not been built yet. – Short cut to trains and school bungled by council; Stuff, 2017

Complaining as a Means of Production did, eventually, get the path made in this case.

The truth is that roading in New Zealand was started off with private persons creating them. As DISCO said recently…

“It amazed me how many driveways became roads as land was subdivided – for example, such roads as Curletts and Glandovey.”

Communities formed Roads Boards and did the job very well until the State increasingly forced these bodies to morph into organs of the state with political baggage. Some resisted but all were eventually snuffed out.

Like    Comment     Share