NO EXTENSION

Sun (Auckland), Volume III, Issue 742, 15 August 1929, Page 16

NO EXTENSION

FAMILY RAILWAY TICKET CONCESSIONS FATHER CANNOT RETURN EARLY (THE SUN’S Parliamentary Reporter.) WELLINGTON, Wednesday. • No extension of the regulations governing the issue of family railway tickets can be made to permit of the father returning in advance of the rest of the family. Replying to a question on the subject by Mr. W. J. Broadfoot (Waitomo) the Hon. W. B. Taverner, Minister of Railways, said that the family concession ticket was the most generous travel concession available on the New Zealand Railways, and was designed with the sole object of enabling and encouraging parents with a number of children to avail themselves of a holiday which perhaps they could not otherwise afford to take. Having regard to the nature of the concession, enabling as it did the parents and any number of children belonging to the same family to travel together at three times the ordinary or holiday excursion fare, it was necessary to evolve a special print of ticket in order to ensure the successful operation of the scheme, the fundamental basis of which was that the parents and children should travel together on both the outward and homeward journeys. To give effect to the request would materially alter the operation of the whole scheme, and, as the concession as it already exists was being extensively availed of and givfng general satisfaction, it would be unwise to do anything that might in any way jeopardise the existing facilities.