Letters: Laws needed to stop people cluttering our streets with litter

An aerial view of Tauranga. Photo/File

I walked past the Red Square (the corner of Devonport and the Strand for those new to our rohe) on Saturday and was saddened to see a quantity of booklets/bible tracts strewn over the footpath.

On Saturday they are handed out like "kool-aid" to anyone going about their business in central Tauranga.

The distributors are clearly convinced of a deity from iron and bronze age writings and not content to pollute their own minds and those of the gullible, they apparently now wish to pollute our streets.

Come on council, surely there are laws to prevent people from cluttering up the streets.

I'd rather have beggars, at least they have reality on their side, harsh though it may be. (Abridged)

Mano David

Brookfield

Fewer planner needed

During the early 1950s it used to take two hours on a metal road to drive from Athenree to Tauranga.

During that decade the National Roads Board undertook a massive upgrade so that on a good run the time was reduced to 45 minutes. The NRB later became Transit which was more independent.

Today the layout is unchanged with some minor improvements but massive congestion caused by population increase.

The 2017 elections saw the National Party's significant upgrade canned due to the Labour Government spending money elsewhere, plus the changes in the NZ Transport Agency which has moved away from being basically responsible for roads to all sorts of wishy-washy subjects which sound good but mean nothing in terms of fixing basic transport problems.

Even Tauranga City has its roading upgrade plans canned by NZTA's seat warmers in Wellington because apparently, we don't give enough consideration to buses, bikes and pedestrians. I am not saying that these matters are unimportant.

The best thing we can do is to abolish the NZTA entirely and bring back Transit with a new team. An observation from a friend of mine is that our roads need more engineers and fewer planners. This type of approach could be applied to many aspects of our society.

Bill Capamagian

Tauranga

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