BUILDING OF RAILWAY LINES.

Manawatu Herald, Volume XXXV, Issue 1078, 20 March 1913, Page 2

BUILDING OF RAILWAY LINES.

As long as Governments refuse to build urgently needed lines, preferring to waste money on such projects as the Otira Tunnel, New Zealand will be behind Canada and other countries where the practice has always been to first take the railway out and to depend upon the people following. No better illustration of the short-sighted-ness of this policy could be given than the failure to make an effort to push forward the East Coast railway from the Waihi end. By the absence of this line what should be one of the most prosperous dairying districts in the world is cut off from market and rendered almost uuoccupiable. Many other districts in the Dominion are in a similar plight. Whilst these conditions prevail it is obviously impossible for the Dominion to successfully hold its own with those other Englishspeaking countries which, whilst they have less natural advantages than ours, are conducting their immigration on sound business lines. This is from the Auckland Herald, but we defy any openminded man who has made the trip between Waihi and Tauranga to justify the construction of this piece of railway. The East Cape should be linked up, certainly, but a different route must be chosen from the one our Auckland contemporary suggests.