NEW ZEALAND RAILWAYS.

Ashburton Guardian, Volume VII, Issue 2320, 4 January 1890, Page 2

NEW ZEALAND RAILWAYS.

Once more Mr Vaile is taking the field as an advocate of Railway Reform,in New Zealand, and has forwarded to as 1 an ad vanee 4 proof of the first of a series of articles on the subject, which, to judge from the contents of this first instalment, will prove a very conclusive and crashing indictment against the present system of management, or mismanagement. He supplies tabulated figures showing, year by year during the period : 1881 to 1889 inclusive, the population of the colony, the number of miles of open railway, the passenger and goods traffic thereon, the revenue derived and the rate of interest earned, the statement referred to being as follows!: —

To this table Mr Yaile appends the significant footnote that Messrs Maxwell and Hannay received their appointments &s General Manager and Sab-Manager in 1880, these gentlemen having thus controlled onr railway policy from the very beginning down to the present date, with the result that, while, " during the last nine years we have increased the mileage of our working railways by 39*1 per cent, and the capital invested therein by 61*2 per cent, the number of passengers has only increased by 9*9 per cent, and the tonnage of goods carried by 42 per cent. Worse still, the 'coaching' revenue, as it termed, has only increased by 3.2 per cent, the total revenue by 19.2 per cent, and the net revenue by 11.5 per cent, while the rate of interest earned has actually decreased by £1 Is Id per cent." The Mowing further facts, and they are startling facts, are also brought out, viz,, that in 1889:— (a) We carried 150,565 fewer passengers th»tn we did in 1883. < 0,.: ;. .■, (b) The train service to the colony was less by 76,981 miles than jt'was in 1884, and this notwithstanding that we had 381 more miles of railway open. (c) The coaching revenue was £4157 less than it was 1882. , (d) The gross revenue ww; £48,097 less than in 1885, while our net revenue was £18,357 less than in 1882, and the rate of interest earned less by £1 Is Id per cent than in 1881. And all this declension notwithstanding the fact that during the period under review the population had increased by 24 per cent. In the face of these facts Mr Yaile is clearly right in contending that our past system of management has proved an utter failure. He contends moreover that "the real cause of our commercial and financial troubles lies in the fact that we have so managed our national transit system as to ruin our great producing districts. We have rendered it impossible for anyone to make a profit out of land situated at a distance from a large centre, and have thus completely destroyed its value, with the inevitable result, which we are all now feeling, that the value is fast going out of our cities, and their suburbs also. By pursuing this insane policy we have rendered it impossible for the country to bear its fair share of taxation, and have thrown that burden almost wholly on city and suburban property, a burden which it is found increasingly difficult to sustain." And he follows this up by putting the following pertinent question: " What is the use of any longer continuing a system which, year by year, shows increasingly worse results—a system which the more millions we icvest in it, the less rate of interest we receive; a system that, after an increased expenditure of over £3,000,000, gives us a less passenger traffic by 150,500 than we had six years ago, when our population was much less ; a system that gives us £50,000 less gross revenue than we had four years ago, and £15>350 less net revenue than we had seven years ago?. Is it not time to pause and ask ourselves the question is there not something seriously wrong £0^ with " the system pursued and (lie men who ifaunjrt3r.it?" __ *

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