The Sun 42 WYNDHAM STREET, AUCKLAND TUESDAY, MAY 7, 1929 STRIKE OUT THE BOTTOM LINE !

Sun (Auckland), Volume III, Issue 656, 7 May 1929, Page 8

The Sun 42 WYNDHAM STREET, AUCKLAND TUESDAY, MAY 7, 1929 STRIKE OUT THE BOTTOM LINE !

THERE need be no confusion in the poll of city and suburban ratepayers to-morrow on the Transport Board’s loan proposals. In each of two simple issues the worst line on the ballot paper is at the bottom. Therefore every ratepayer with an intelligent understanding of Auckland conditions to-day should strike out the bottom line without hesitation and so make sure of a revival of enterprise. Those who may be tempted either bv selfish city or suburban motives, or by the shallow arguments of irresponsible debaters, to strike out the top line in each case will vote for stagnation and inadequate service.

Thirty-eight thousand ratepayers in ten different municipal districts within the area of the Transport Board’s jurisdiction have the right to vote. They unpardonably will fail in their duty as responsible citizens if they maintain Auckland’s notorious apathy and ignore the poll. If they should be foolish enough to do that as another example of expensive indifference they will not be able to ignore the consequences of their “can’t-be-bothered” foolishness. Without the money sought for as essential means of development the board can do nothing at all to improve the existing unsatisfactory position of community transport—a position which precipitated the drastic necessity for wrenching transport control out of the fumbling hands of the City Council. Indeed, if the new administration be denied the power to raise capital for sound purposes with the certainty of earning great profit and without the need or prospect of adding to the burden of ratepayers, the board will be placed in such a quandary as to confront it with the grave possibility of surrendering its power to some other authority which probably would prove to be something worse. The transport system of Greater Auckland has been allowed to run into a condition of hopeless inadequacy and meagre profit. The Transport Board is in no way or sense responsible for that unfortunate plight. It was created out of public discontent to extricate the service from a financial morass and so far it has done the right thing and has taken the right steps toward firmer ground. It lias cut its losses in the worst places and has adjusted its services to the best possible advantage of the community. In these processes the board probably did not win popularity everywhere, but its policy was inevitable. And now the board cannot do anything more without new capital for essential tramway extensions which could not fail to pay their way and soon earn a good profit, and for the purchase of at least fifty cars to cope with disgraceful overcrowding of passengers in the rush traffic hours and to release for belated overhaul much overworked rolling stock which is being rattled into uselessness before its time. It is for the ratepayers to decide to-morrow whether they will remain discontented with a hopelessly inadequate service that yields a microscopic profit or vote for a new era of expansion and profitable transport business. Two issues have to be determined: one providing authority to raise a loan of £526,600 for a developmental programme extending over about four years, and the other authorising the raising of £280,000 for a smaller scheme of development. The greater sum includes the smaller, but in voting for one or the other, or for both, which is the better way to vote, ratepayers should realise that a three-fifths majority is needed to carry either proposal. And as everybody ought to know a three-fifths majority is rarely ever easy to get at a poll in which there is more than a straight-out issue. It is not necessary to elaborate the details of to-morrow’s poll. The position is clear enough to intelligent ratepayers. And they need not give any heed at all to the debating rabble last evening at the Town Hall. It is true that Mr. Allum showed great courage in addressing the silly meeting, but if he went there in the spirit of Daniel he must have discovered quickly that he was not in a den of lions. ARAPUNI—AT LAST NEARLY two years behind time, Arapuni power is in a week or so to be delivered to Auckland consumers. To-night the great transmission line marching across country from the shoulders of Mount Maungatautari to the suburbs of Auckland will be alive for the first time, and in a fortnight, Avhen testing of the generating unit and the line has been completed, power will be switched into the King’s Wharf station and part of the plant there will be closed down. One of the unfortunate indirect effects is that some of the staff there must be put off. Like the workers who sit idle watching steam shovels doing their jobs, they are paying the price of progress. Natural satisfaction at the consummation of the great task at Arapuni must be tempered by the fact that it is two years behind time and has cost a tremendous amount more than the estimated price. As it stands, the job is a wonderful engineering triumph, one of the greatest in the world. The audacity of the plan as conceived by the Public Works Department has won the respect of engineers from all parts of the world. Engineering difficulties of a type never encountered elsewhere on such a scale have been tackled and overcome in the narrow pathway of the Waikato. Floods, accidents, strikes and the obdurate character of both the river and the country, all conspired to hinder progress and send costs whirling above the estimate. Perhaps the Public Department was too optimistic in the first place. Armstrong, Whitworth’s original tender exceeded the departmental estimate by £7,000. The other tenders were as much as £600,000 above the department’s figure. By paring and adjusting between the department and the lowest tenderers the latter’s price was whittled down by a few odd thousands, but the futility of this process is illustrated by the extent to which the bedrock price has been exceeded. As for the delay, the true responsibility for it will probably never be fixed. Armstrong, Whitworth, Ltd., irritated the department, and the department irritated Armstrong. Whitworth’s. The Government of the day left its intervention far too late, and there are those who say that, if the State department had been subjected to the'same attentions and restrictions as it devoted to the contractors, the powerhouse job would not be nearing completion to-day. Be that as it may, the department has put up a meritorious performance in handling the task as it has. For good or ill, it got on with the work, and that was better than vacillation and delay. Tbe method of closing' fissures in the rock by forcing in liquid cement, under intense pressure, showed striking resource, and Messrs. Dinnie and Rabone, who had charge over this difficult period, should be marked down for departmental recognition. Through their capacity and enterprise a turbine is running, tbe Waikato is charging into the penstocks, and the long struggle is nearing its close.