OTHER PAPERS’ OPINIONS

Putaruru Press, Volume VII, Issue 280, 21 March 1929, Page 4

OTHER PAPERS’ OPINIONS

ROTORUA-TAUPO RAILWAY. The announcement that the Government is going to stop work on the Rotorua-Taupo railway will cause amazement and dismay. It is an act of supreme unwisdom and will awake the keenest hostility in local circles. We will not traverse the obvious discrepancies in Government policy in respect to competitive railway claims, North versus South, which seems to be the guiding principle of the Ward mal-administration. There is another aspect that is of tremendous moment to Rotorua and also to the Dominion. What is to become of our forests ? Are they to be abandoned to the blackberry, rabbit and deer? What will private afforestation companies think of this amazing decision, and how will it affect the shareholders? It would appear that the ■ Ministers who are responsible for this astounding decision have two ways of talking, one for popular consumption at each point of contact. The Minister for Public Works was reported as having said that it was certain that the railway would at least go as far as Waiotapu, and most assuredly the Reporoa Soldiers’ Settlement was to a man confident of railway facilities within a few years. If the present decision stands, then it is good-bye to progress for many more years. The aspect of unemployment is net the least of the tragic issues that develop out of the departmental decision. What will become of the men and their families ? They cannot be transferred bodily to the southern railway construction works. What about the village hutments ? There is at least £IOO,OOO of the country’s money thrown down the sink. It may be that the men, deprived of work on the railways, may be put upon roading construction, and we commend this palliative to the Public Works Department. Concentration is need of the existing forces and the plant upon the construction of Te Wairoa road and sub-

sidiary tourist roads now in a state of wrecic. The whole of the Round Trip tracks need reconstruction, and this is an admirable chance to devote a little energy to revenue-producing works, now dying through want of attention. The decision of the Ministry comes as a bombshell and will in combustion ■ produce more than a loud report.—Rotorua Chronicle.

The decision of Cabinet to cease work on the Taupo railway will, ivr imagine, be generally greeted with satisfaction. It may be taken as a sign that the present Government has grasped what the late Government totally failed to do, that the day of railway construction in New Zealand has passed, and that no more can be profitably undertaken. indeed many of the branch lines, particularly in the South Island, could with advantage be closed and turned into roads. The Times has always contended that what is needed for the development of the country wa> simply the main lines with good feeder roads enabling out produce to be brought to the railway and taken to the ports. Instead of that w= have had the spectacle of a huge expenditure in such projects as the Taupo railway, and the still less justified Dargaville extension, and a Main Highways scheme, the chief outcome of which has been the injury of existing railway lines. Now for the first time Ministers appear to be capable of realising what modem transport conditions actually mean. For short distances the road will beat the rail every time, and the building of new lines will no more hinder the extension of the use of the car and the lorry than King Canute was able to hinder the rising of the tide. That the extension to Dargaville will shortly meet the same fate as the Taupo railway may now be looked upon as practically certain. We used to hear a great deal about political railways in the early days of our line-building activities, but not one of them was a more shameless “ job ” than this line. Not merely has the first half of it, the section now open as far as Kirikopuni, involved an enormous expenditure, but from the very first, owing to the means of transport already existing, was doomed to failure as a revenue-

producing undertaking. It would always have to fight for its trade against the finest navigable river in New Zealand, and was thus hopelessly out-handicapped from the first. Sir Joseph Ward said that the Taupo line would not make- any contribution towards the interest on the cost of its construction, meaning that the best that could be hoper for from it would be that the revenue would meet running < costs. The branch from the northern main line to Kirikopuni will do well if it pavs half the running costs, leaving the +*>•*- payer to meet the other half and the interest charges. If the people of New Zealand renllv realised what a dead load of (1»H hod been hung round their necks by illconsidered or, what is worse, wellconsidered but corrupt noliticnl railway building, they would hold a d«v of general thanksgiving now that their administrators have at length faced the situation and called a halt —Franklin Times.