QUESTION TIME

Sun (Auckland), Volume II, Issue 344, 3 May 1928, Page 13

QUESTION TIME

TRANSPORT INQUIRY (Continued from Page 1) Key’s service had served the area for 11 years, and one of the effects was to make Keys’s passengers pay the penal fare out to Meadowbank Road. The service was taken off for three days and then put back. He understood the bus was run as a policy matter. They were preserving their own route. It was withdrawn on the prospect of an appeal from Keys. Also, and more importantly, it was withdrawn because Keys might have been able to hold that he was in competition with the city tramways. Mr. Meredith mentioned that this did not eventuate until the question had been referred to the licensing authority five times, and the authoritv had referred it to the Tramways Committee, which was, of course, not a committee belonging to the authority, but to the City Council. THE £414,000 LOSS On the commission resuming after lunch to-day, the estimate that the city tramways were £414,000 to the bad as the result of bus competition was questioned by Mr. Meredith. Mr. Ford admitted that the estimate was only an estimate, based on reasonable premises. Mr. Meredith pointed out that in 1922 a 5 per cent, increase was shown in passengers, but in 1921 the figures were only for 344 days, as ugainsi 305 days in 1922. Mr. KorcT: It would have been more correct to calculate it considering that. Mr. Meredith: I say it is absolutely incorrect not to consider it. ’ The real figures show a decrease of 1.2 per cent As the £414,000 loss is based on figures for three years prior to 1924 which are wrong, the estimate is wrong. Instead of estimating on a 6.4 increase in passengers it should be calculated on 4.26 per cent. (Proceeding.)