LETTERS TO THE EDITOR

Pukekohe & Waiuku Times, Volume 9, Issue 555, 6 August 1920, Page 1

LETTERS TO THE EDITOR

NEW ZEALAND RAILWAYS. THE MANAGEMENT CRITICISED. Sir,—"What everybody objects to in the Railway Department is the publicly damned attitude of it,' said Mr. T. M. Wilford on the floor of the House, and the speaker "'spoke from 25 years' experience."--Press report. Some of us have had an even longer experience of this great autocracy. So recent as 1908 the last train leaving the city for Papatoetoe (but 11 miles distant) was the Waikato 4.15 p.m.. Yes, the pioneers of suburban Auckland can well go beyond this period. They know the dogged agitation (on this south suburban line) to squeeze out even the smallest concession. Absolutely blind to the interests of the general public, this great institution has been run to suit the bosses, and your autocratic engineers and inspectors can well reltire, but they have left such indelible marks on this young country that they will never be effaced in this generation. Their monuments stand on the Eilerslie, Penrose, and Manurewa bridges as they go south increasing in callous indifference to the travelling public. Mr. Geo. Henning, in giving evidence on the Roading Commission, said: "The New Zealand Railways' practice of making such bends in order to bridge the railway at right angles as had been done at Eilerslie, Penrose, and Manurewa is both dangerous and foolish.'.' He might have said dangerous and criminal, and he might have further explained that the bridge at Manurewa, perhaps the worst of the examples given, would have been erected at right angles and have been even more dangerous, but for a Manurewa deputation that waited on both the Automobile Association and the Railway Department: I have, Mr. Editor, no hesitation in saying that the treatment meted out to rising townships by these autocrats would never have been tolerated in any country save New Zealand. We here in Manurewa had in the Valley Road one of the finest highways in the province. A main arterial road reaching right across the isthmus from the waters of the Manukau to Weymouth, to Whitford and the Waitemata. Yet these country despoilers fenc the road across, cut it in twain, and to protesting citizens they have snapped their fingers at public convenience and private ownership. What, I say, if the New Zealand Railways had been a privately-owned concern? Is there any country in the world that would have tolerated such an action? And still the game goes on, and will continue till these autocratic fossils are ejected, and their places filled by younger men, who would be more in touch with the ambitions of a rising county. Mr. Massey (vide press) replying to the caustic criticism of the Railway Department, said: "What had happened had cleared the air, and he hoped the future would see a satisfied railway service. He was not going to throw the responsibility upon the railway management, but would take a share of it." I maintain, Mr. Editor, that the "satisfied service" is an impossibility so long as the management is in the same hands, and the Pukekohe, Drury, Papakura, and Manurewa authorities can continue to clamour and agitate for reform (through their member). They are all barking up the wrong tree. These facts, I say, incontrovertibly prove that the whole management is in the hands of these old-time autocrats. ENOS S. PEGLER. Manurewa, August 2, 1920.