OUR AUCKLAND LETTER.

Franklin Times, Volume 9, Issue 790, 5 December 1922, Page 5

OUR AUCKLAND LETTER.

OUR RAILWAYS. (From Our Own Since Mr Harris, member for Waitemata, astonished the public by. , declaring (apparently in good faith) that the New Zealand railways were “the best in Australasia, and probably the best in the world/’ I have been curious to meet him. I should like to ask him if hertTlas ever journeyed by sail between Auckland and Helensville, or made the trip by train to Henderson or Pukekohe, The old stage coaches that traversed England in the days before railways were invented, .used, so 1 have read, to do their steady ten miles an hour. Our trains’ travel faster than that. They annihilate distance at the rate of 12 or 15 miles an hour.* That is the ordinaiy passenger trains do. I belfeve our so-called “express” sometimes dash along at over 20 miles an hour. Of v course Mr Harris is welcome to think viwhat he likes about our lines, Buthe fact remains that most of us regard the N.Z. railways as the worst managed an/1 most unsatisfactory on earth. CROSSING OVER. The City Council is understood to be considering the passing of a spec- / ial by-law prohibiting the crossing of our maini thoroughfares by jjedestrians save at certain defined crossing places. Foot passengers will be required to cross over in a straight line from pavement to pavement, and not obliquely. And all persons who fail to guide their steps accordingly will be punished with the utmost rigor of the (by) law. Possibly before this meets the eye of the rqader the proposed regulation will be in force, But I believe there is no truth in the rumour that male and female inspectors are to be appointed by the Council to wait upon householders and others and see that they are in bed (also, tuck them tin> at an hour to be fixel by the Council. Legislation is occasionally characterised by those who are /opposed to it as “grand-motherly.” The term might be fittingly ,applied to some of our City by-laws. A SCOUNDREL. The same individual is supposed to be responsible lor all the attacks made upon women in the Mt. Eden district ojf late. And yet (at the time of writing), he is still at large—another illustration of the shortage of constables in Auckland, and if further evidence of that shortage is 1 wanted it is to be found in the numerous qases of burglary occurring in the suburbs of late.. It is the rarest thing to see a constable in our city streets now (unless he is engaged on point duty)* anti as for the suburbs you might as well search l for a needle in a haystack, To return to the man who is (or was) terrifying women, If this gentleman were carrying on his little game in an American city the residents W’Ould not bother the police about him. They would form a vigilance committee and run the offender to earth, after which he would be made to play the lead in a little drama in which a tf*r barrel and sack of feahers would also play a prominent part, HOUSING AND PROFITEERING. At one of his recent meetings Mr Clutha Mackenzie, who ‘is st.an.ding for re-election to Auckland East, referred to the housing conditions in that electorate as disgraceful, and said that rent restrictions notwithstanding rents had reached a figure which men with families ; could not afford to pay. Unfortunately this state of things is not..confined to Auckland East. It obtains' all over Auckland). And it (is not only whole houses for which high rents are demanded. Profiteering is carried on by apartment house keepers as welL In the Grafton district the rent, asked for a single furnishd room its frequently 30s and upwards, and it is the same story elsewhere. In some cases the individual rents two o,r three houses and lets off the rooms to various tenants at prices that Iqave a wide margin of profit. It is about time that something was done.