BUS OWNERS’ LOSSES

Sun (Auckland), Volume I, Issue 194, 5 November 1927, Page 12

BUS OWNERS’ LOSSES

AUCKLAND METHODS CRITICISED POINT CHEVALIER SERVICE (THE SUN’S Parliamentary Reporter.) WELLINGTON. Friday. The Auckland City Council does not stand well in the esteem of some of the Auckland members of the House of Representatives, the transport system to the suburbs having agitated them to say some hard things about the council’s methods. It is averred by Mr. A. H. Harris, member for Waitemata, that through the council’s interference in the bus services to. certain districts, there was now a service less efficient and more costly than when the pioneer private concerns took it up. The question was raised in the House of Representatives to-day through the petition of S. H. Gallagher, of Auckland, seeking compensation for loss which he says he and his partner suffered through the purchase of his buses by the Auckland City Council. The Petitions Committee which reported the subject back to the House, recommended the consideration and inquiry of the Government, because it was considered that the petitioners, through the operation of the MotorOmnibus Traffic Act, had suffered serious hardship. Mr. A. Harris gave the House the full history of the operations of the company run by Gallagher and his partner since the time in 1924 when they had instituted a bus service to Point Chevalier to meet a very urgent need.

At one stage the City Council had promised the petitioners that if it was intended to run a municipal service in opposition, notice of this intention would be given. It was not long after tnis, however —December 21, of 1925 that: the manager of the Auckland City tramways informed the company over the telephone that buses would be put on the road, and three days later this was done. Not only that, but fares were cut and the council ran a pirate service generally with the object of putting the company off the road. The competition ran for 10 months until the council took over the buses under last year’s Act. By being forced to reduce the fare to 4d, the company had registered a loss of £1,557 in 15 months. The company is claiming £2,403 loss in revenue as a result of competition with the City Council. The position now is that the council is running an inadequate . service, has returned the fares, to 6d. and generally speaking had jncreased the people’s fares (including the removal of certain concessions) by 50 per cent. The company was running at a cost of 9.7 d a mile and the council cannot do it under 17.Sd a mile, which is a heavy loss. NOT SERVING THE PEOPLE “The service which these men were running was a useful public service, competing with no other service,” said Mr. H. G. R. Mason, Eden. Whatever the City Council had gone into the district for, it was not to serve the people of that district. They had smashed the bus service. Mr. J. S. Dickson. Parnell, defended the action of the City Council. The City Council had bought the buses at mutually arranged prices, and the question did not go to arbitration: further, the. council had paid more for the buses than appeared on the company’s books. DEPRECIATION ACCOUNTS Mr. V. H. Potter, Roskill, said that the City Council had had the advantage of getting the buses below their real value, as petitioners had provided for depreciation of 25 per cent., while the council’s buses were written down at the lowest possible figure—l2* per cent. Mr. Potter criticised the “unbusinesslike” methods of the council, which he said had neither a renewal or depreciation account, with a debt of nearly £ 5.000,000, and it was unable to say how much it had lost on its buses and how much on its trams.