CHAOS IN TRANSPORT

Evening Post, Volume CX, Issue 140, 11 December 1930, Page 8

CHAOS IN TRANSPORT

Long behind most countries, New Zealand has at last reached the stage of having tenders in for an air mail service. In due course, probably, such a service will come into operation. But though our carriage of mails will arrive somewhat belatedly, compared with air performances in many other countries, the event is yet a landmark in New Zealand's history, and should remind New Zealanders of their waste of time in dealing with co-ordination of transport. With an aerial service looming up, they have as yet not tackled the real problem of rails and road, and have not even begun to acquire such experience of rail-rubber co-ordination as would have been so helpful in envisaging the greater problem of land, sea, and air. Yet even to-day, in Australia, air-lines and railway services are already in competition, as is evidenced by the annual report to the Federal Government on the working of the trans-Continental railway linking Eastern States with die West. -While it is true that commercial flying in most countries is still resting on the artificial basis of subsidy, yet past experience shows such rapid progress that the aeroplane may at any time emerge on a full competitive passen-ger-carrying level with land and sea. Surely it is time, then, to have a national transport policy. But Parliament shirks even that part of the problem which, as between rail and road, has already come to a crisis.