If your interested in history then a useful resource is Papers past which is part of the National Libraries. They describe it as;
Papers Past contains more than two million pages of digitised New Zealand newspapers and periodicals. The collection covers the years 1839 to 1945 and includes 77 publications from all regions of New Zealand.
Because all of the resources are fully searchable it makes extremely useful and is where I was able find this newspaper page. This week they added the editions of the NZ Herald from 1885 to 1924. While having a very quick look search through I came across what appears to have been a letter to the editor from 1924.
The Morningside Deviation that is referred to is what is now known as the City Rail Link. What I found interesting is that while some of the terminology and language used highlights that this is old, many of the arguments are the same we hear today. In particular the suggestions that we don’t need rail as buses can do the job and that we should instead focus on a harbour crossing.
Many of those that oppose the CRL like to use very similar arguments to what was presented here in 1924. It seems some things never change, we instead need to just get on with the task and finally get this project built.
Note: the first reference to the Morningside Deviation in the Herald appears to have been in 1918. That means that even if we get the CRL opened to the timetable that the council is hoping for (2021) it would have over 100 years since the project was first proposed.
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100 years? Not bad by NZ standards. Up until quite recently, letters to newspapers could be written with relative anonymity, a privilege that editors now reserve only for themselves.
I think we need to bring back the term “motor-omnibus”. “Bus” is far too short a word for such a long vehicle.
Let’s hear it for the author! There probably wasn’t the need or demand 95 years ago, and so the arguments are fairly coherent. There certainly is sufficient need now.
Secondly, the author is particularly forward thinking in asking that land be set aside and provisions be made for a key piece of future infrastructure. It was eventually created, and it unlocked a huge amount of potential in Auckland.
In the context of Auckland and the Dominion in 1924 the writer;s conclusion that the Morningside deviation would be a second-rate solution for both shortening the rail connection with the rest of North Auckland and accommodating future residential growth for the city is the correct one.
For this letter, the most important change in terminology and language since 1924 is that nowadays traffic means motor traffic whereas in 1924 traffic was inclusive of all modes. So this proposal for a combined rail/road bridge to open up the North Shore and Northland at a time whne most roads in Northland were impassible in wet weather is actually more sensible than spending money on a tunnel to compete with the trams to New Lynn and encoutaging the conversion of Henderson orchards and farms into housing.
Of course in modern Auckland none of those arguments remain valid.and in fact they probably would have been much less valid even in the 1950s.
Sorry to be off topic but Papers Past is a national treasure and it is credit to our country that it is free and easy to use.
Paul Krugman is constantly talking about zombie arguments — ones that are well and truly dead but just keep coming back. We’ve certainly got serious zombie problems in New Zealand…
What is also interesting is that he thinks that trams are facing significant competition from buses. There is nothing new under the sun.