The Sun THURSDAY, DECEMBER 22, 1927. BUS TRANSPORT MUDDLE

Sun (Auckland), Volume I, Issue 234, 22 December 1927, Page 10

The Sun THURSDAY, DECEMBER 22, 1927. BUS TRANSPORT MUDDLE

IT was made very clear at the special conference yesterday on the muddle of bus transport in Auckland that the various suburban local bodies represented thereat have no confidence whatever in the City Council’s administration of the wretched system. The desire to criticise the transport authorities was strong at the conference, but it could not find expression because of a ruling by Mr. J. A. C. Allum, chairman, that such criticism would be out of order. The chief administrator of the city’s tram and bus transport system was well within his rights in confining discussion to the main purpose of the conference, this being the reception of suggestions from the suburban local bodies as to carrying on the bus services pending the report of the projected commission of inquiry. The collective mind of the local bodies’ representatives, however, was firmly against the City Council having anything more to do with providing bus services for the suburbs. This, in itself, was the harshest kind of criticism of the council’s policy and the unsatisfactory methods of the transport management. There was indeed little need of detailed condemnatory comment on a sorry business. The city authorities’ record in respect of its acquired monopoly of bus transport is a lamentable story of policy blunders, profitless management, community exasperation, and a grievous loss of public money. In these miserable circumstances the representatives of suburban local bodies definitely refuse either to guarantee the cost of operating bus services under the control of the City Council or to accept a complete reorganisation of the existing deplorable system. They want an immediate return to private bus enterprise. They are more than tired of municipal control in the form of an expensive monopoly. They are simply disgusted with it, and desire to see it slip into oblivion. If their hearts were hard against the Tramways Committee yesterday, how much harder would their hearts be last night and again this morning when the capricious electric-power supply abruptly failed in the usual mysterious fashion and paralysed the city’s main transport system, to say nothing of the disruption of other public utilities and industrial machinery. Though the trams were thus rendered impotent for about forty minutes this morning at a time when thousands of citizens needed reliable transport to their daily tasks, there was no private bus service available. There was none because the City Council and the meddlesome Government, in the impulsive foolishness of hysterical fear, had driven a hundred buses off the roads. And as far as the exasperated citizens could see in the period of tramway paralysis, the transport authorities did not hasten to prove that their monopoly could be proved an efficient auxiliary service. No wonder the suburban local bodies yearn wistfully for the revivial of private enterprise in bus transport. But there is another side to the story. The vital interests of the city ratepayers are further jeopardised and imperilled. As a result of the administration’s stupid policy, the ratepayers have already lost £144,000 in municipal bus enterprise. Is that sum to he thrown into the deep morass of administrative blunders and abandoned? Is private enterprise to be given a clear field with entirely new plant, and the Tramways Committee left to contemplate a heap <>f junk ? These questions must be answered satisfactorily before -the city ratepayers will agree to a complete surrender of the municipal bus system and its rights and privileges to private enterprise. Since the Government was largely responsible for the extravagant muddle of bus transport, it should hasten the appointment of an expert commission of inquiry with determination to make order out of chaos. Meanwhile, as far as the whole community is concerned, the City Council is bereft of sympathy. It also is fated for a di'astic change.

“ WASTING ” WATER THE citizens of Auckland, and more particularly those who improve the appearance of the city so immensely by the cultivation of gardens, are accused by the Water Committee—or should it be the Waterless Committee?—of that council which administers its affairs with so much verbal activity, of wasting the water supply. On Tuesday they used 10,600,000 gallons of water, and they are threatened that, if the consumption is not reduced to-day and to-morrow, they will be prohibited the use of garden hoses altogether. Why should those who water their gardens be thus singularly cautioned? Why not threaten to seal up bath-taps? After sufficiently protracted reflection, it may occur to the drop-by-drop water-dispensers that quite a few people like a cold bath in the mornings, and perhaps even in the evenings on these hot summer days. In this way 100,000 people would use 3,000,000 gallons of water a day. Dreadful waste! And the waste of water in washing clothes is quite as shocking. When the wise administrators of this municipally-perfect city proudly informed the world that all reasonable requirements in the way of water would easily be met for years to come (they have said this with great confidence every wet winter), they did not calculate on water being wasted on such luxuries as bathing and washing, let alone watering gardens. The present dictum of the City Council is that garden-hoses must be used only on Tuesdays and Thursdays. It has not occurred to it that there is sueh a day as Saturday, when the business man and the worker get home for the afternoon and have a few hours’ leisure in which to apply the hose. This oversight, however, might be remedied by the City Council bringing in a by-law to change the half-holiday to Tuesday—or Thursday. It would still further enhance the rapidly-increasing popularity of our, civic administration.