RAILWAY ANOMALIES.

Hauraki Plains Gazette, Volume XXXIII, Issue 4429, 19 June 1922, Page 2

RAILWAY ANOMALIES.

INCONVENIENT REGULATIONS. i A VISITOR’S COMMBNTt ' An Australian visitor who had completed a business trip through New Zealand had some interesting criticism to offer concerning railway ad-; ministration. He had no dpubt, he; said, that the New Zealand railways: were losing money and inflicting inconvenience upon travellers through" the operation of some of the existing regulations. He was unable to ged that the regulations he had in mind had any advantage from the point pE view of the Railway Department. I Quoting an example, the visitorsaid that he found single tickets to be available for only four days- (states the Dominion). This appeared to J>e a survival of a regulation imposed during the period of acute coal shortage three years ago, and it was a source of great inconvenience to travellers. A person going from. Wellington to Auckland, and taking a through ticket, had to complete the journey in four days. If he spent a couple of days at Palmerston North - and a couple of days at Hamilton: en route the ticket would become invalid'; Yet he could stop as often as he'liked if he took the trouble of. buying and gave the Department the trouble of issuing a, new ticket for each stage. Th!s would cost him only id extra for each section, driginally the single ticket was good for a mppth, and the traveller’ could break;,; the journey anywhere after fifty miles, without trouble. Another anomaly was that there inducement to any person to take a return ticket. The return fare was exactly double the amount ofl the single fa/e, and the traveller was tied down to return within a jnonth. This must cause loss of revenue, since it gave the traveller hp inducement to use the railway for the return journey. If the Department issued return tickets, at a reduped rate, and made them, available for three months, people -would buy them and the Department would have the use of a part of the money withput inter-. est.for a, month, or two.. . Then there was the question of reserved •seats, added the visitor. Why was it not perinissible to reserve seats for a journey of less than 100 miles ? A traveller could reserve a seat between Christchurch and Timaru (100 miles), but not between Wellington and Feilding (99 miles). People who were using some of the lines out from Christchurch could not reserve scats because the termini of the lines were within 100 miles of the city. That seemed absurd, since it could not be contended that people; reserving sats for the complete ney would be depriving any “long distance, traveller’' o,f accommodation.