THE NATIONAL RAILWAYS

Hokitika Guardian, 28 June 1930, Page 6

THE NATIONAL RAILWAYS

~Mr Forbes’ independent commission which will investigation the affairs of the New Zealand Railways will be a very clever body indeed if it can discover a method of making the lines pay interest on their construction, as some people demand they should. Was there ever a national railway system which accomplished such a feat? Here we have our railways debited with the accumulated millions of expenditure over half a century or so and not a word abput the credit balance that should rightly be shown taking into accouhjt the vast development service rendered by the running of lines during that period. We have only to consider the Waikato or the King Country, to contrast its past with its present in order to realise that the State railways are not to be judged by their revenueearning records alone. The full services of the Dominion rail system cannot be set down in any statement of profit and loss, like any ordinary commercial undertaking. How can they possibly be estimated in such values save in the most general way?

Conditions financial are unfortunately the reverse of flush to-day. let could we accept those conditions as an argument, say for discontinuing work on the Main Trunk-Strat-ford connection? This line is a vital to the progress of settlement and business in the heart ol the North Island as the Otira line is in the South. It is near its completion, yet there are those who would say “Drop all works.” It is tolerably safe to predict that this rail link between Auckland and Taranaki will be at least as bus} 7 a line as the Otira. More, it will stimulate closer settlement all the way, which cannot be said of the trans-alpinc route in the South, useful a,s it is. The Stratford route will be of far more value as a traffic channel than any motor speedway through that hillway can ever become.

The relative merits of railways and road motor services will, of course, be raised in the coming enquiry 7 . There is just this about it, that some critics.of the railways are apt to forget: motor services may be here to-day and gone to-morrow; there, is no obligation on their owners to remain, for a public good. The State 'railway system cannot divest itself of, its, responsibilities, in that way. The country, expects it to cany on, even at a loss, and rightly so. It is the national servant, its man-of-all-work; it is the steady and dependable standby.

Those are a few 7 of the elementary considerations that must be borne in mind/when railway finance is criticised and scarified. As for the technical and general efficiency of the national lines, it must be. admitted that there has been' a. very, great improvement in the last few years/ To travellers, little things are all important, and in the little things on board the train and in the booking offices, in my own experience, there is an all-round change for the better, as compared with conditions, say ten years ago. We‘ can rairly give the Department- credit for efficiency in the many details that make for the- comfort of the traveller and the convenience of the freight shipper. I don’t think the railway people have anything to fear from the closest scrutiny on those points; on the contrary, they have everything to their credit. It- is to the larger questions of giving the railways full credit for their work and uses, and of securing to the railways the business that would be theirs.if it were not for the extraordinary way we have of building costly speed roads in order to take business away from the railways, that the commission must bend its collective mind. —J.C. in Auckland “Star.”