WORLD PROBLEM

Hokitika Guardian, 23 February 1933, Page 2

WORLD PROBLEM

ROBD AND RAIL

QUESTION OE TRANSPOET. Th e National Government in G’’eat Britain suffered a defeat during the week on a motion which read dangerously like a vot p of censure, comments th e Auckland "Herald. There js not likely to be any political upheaval as a result, because the vote was in the House of Lords, and the defeat came on what would be called, in any less august assemblage, a snap division. The incident- can be dismissed easily, hut there is more reason to Huger over the subject of the motion. It was concerned with read and rail transport, and the Government wn,s in effect censured for having failed to grapple with the problem it present* .

It is .nothing new for the Government to be urged to act in this most difficult field. I,t h-s held a number of inquiries and been presented with much data, but thifi complaint is that time has been allowed to go by without anything being done. For example, there was a /brief debate in the House of Commons on December 20, with the report of the .Salter Conference as jus text. This report, provided by the Conference on Road and Bril Transport, was returned at the end of (July, the date being rigidly fixed da /the ground '-that action was urgently demanded. Yet in December there wer e complaints that nothing had been done, and tihey have been heard 'again in February. But i.t has to be recognised that the same difficulties- and the same complaintrs of inaction can ho heard in a dozen’ different countries. The problem of land transport is,, in fact, worldwide, and its main linos are th P same everywhere. The enormous development .oF the road vehicle, the rapid .'increase of mading costs, and the adverse effect on railway prosperity are behind the difficulty everywhere, 'while thes e circumstances fnve been aggravated by the equally widespread depression. The people of New Zealand d 0 not need to be told that a transport problem, on the lines sketched, exists. They have their own version of it, complicated by past years of construction inspired by unbounded optijmfsm and coloured by political considerations. The position in Australia iis very similar, except that an added complication exists because unco-ordinated construction in pre-federal days has left a legacy of varying gauges which places a deadly hajnclmajp on real through traffic. Britain’s position has ' already been touched upon. In Canada- ther e is a railhvay problem )ofi menacing proportions, the rival' activities of what is now the Canadian National system ancl of the Canadian Pacific having brought in their train a crop of difficulties.

'Leas, perhapß, is heard there of the road facto r because these two great railway systems monopolise the centre of the stage. South Africa has, to face al heavy deficit on the railways as an ugly phase of the Budget problem. Even India has not been immune. It wa, s declared at one tim e that the Indian railways would b e the last to fae,l the • pinch because the Indian people have • a passion for train travelling; and- passenger traffic could be trusted to keep to* a high level whatever happened- elsewhere. In ispite of that, the latest reports of railway finance are not favourable. Going outside the Empire, it would be much harder to find a country which had no transport question to vex it than to find instances parallel with those quoted from Empire countries. To take on e example, in the U n ited States the situation is sufficiently pressing to hav e inspired a full dress policy speech by Mr Roosevelt during his presidential campaign. H e produced a plan for the railways which resembled jn many particulars the recommendations of a commission of inquiry which has just reported. It is enough to show how the nations share the same trouble on this one issue. The main lines of the situation as sketched by the Salter report serve to typify the position far beyond the shores of .Great Britain, to which they were intended to apply. It explained that at the beginning of the century the railways were supreme in their own sphere, the roads were constructed and maintained at tli e . public expense ■for the use of pedestrians, cyclists and .horse traffic. The cost was about £12,000,000 a year. The report proceeds ; “In a single generation this situation has been completely transformed. The roads are now predominantly used by motor vehicles ; all other use made o 7 the roads, though not unimportant, is entirely secondary.

There are now about 1,000,000 private motor-cars, 627,000 motor-cycles, 364,000 goods motor vehicles and 87,000 taxicabs, motor omnibuses and coaches in Great Britain.” The co«t of the roads, it remarks, has risen to £60,000,000 a year, while the railways. with their £800,000,000 capital, ai\. fighting a desperate battle against adverse cU'ctiftiotances. The facts s° reejiled closely resemble those given by Mr Roosevelt in his campaign speech, though of course the actual figures differ. Railway capital, be isa’d, was represented by securities to the approximate value of £2,200,000,000, or nearly half the amount of the United States Government debt, and “about 30,006.000 people, have a stake in these great American enterprises.” :

TTe. also spoke of the great sv-tom of highways that had been built at public, expense parallel with Dm milways, and th,. relatively small share

of their op keep contributed by motor v'di idles, “You "P'J T, in our annual tax bit's, pay for most of the maintenance of the highways and interest charges on thei,- construction,” was tlie way Mr .Roosevelt put it. Enough has been said to show how worldwide the problem is. Y°t each country must find its own solution, for it is wholly a domestic problem for ..rich. The chief hope i« that, as so many are seeking earnestly a way out will emerge somewhere which will ihe of assistance to nil countries .troubled with a Ijy>nsport problem.