ROAD AND RAIL TRAFFIC

Sun (Auckland), Volume III, Issue 840, 7 December 1929, Page 6

ROAD AND RAIL TRAFFIC

TRANSPORT BILL PROBLEMS CO-ORDINATION NECESSARY Press Association DUNEDIN, Friday. Reference to the Transport Bill which came before the last session of Parliament, was made by Mr. A. E. Ansell, M.P., at the quarterly meeting of the South Island Motor Union today. He said the Minister of Transport has been authorised to set up a transport board, which Mr. Ansell understood was to investigate coordination between road and rail traffic. Mr. Ansell said no serious attempt had been made to co-ordinate the two systems. No doubt the ideal solution W'ould be that each form of transport •would deal with the traffic most suited to it. At present the railways were losing about £1,000,000 a year, with every prospect of a serious increase in the loss unless some action was taken. The capital invested in motor traffic in New Zealand amounted to £69,000,000, and the capital cost of the railways was about £ 57,500,000. These two forms of transport were in competition with each other, but surely that competition could be eliminated by some form of co-ordination. The running cost of motor transport in the Dominion was more than £20,000,000 a year, to which had to be added at least £8,000,000 or £10,000,000 for depreciation. He did not know what v/*s going to happen in view of such a heavy expenditure. Figures regarding the importation of motor vehicles in nine months of the current year were really startling, compared with the first nine months of last year. The increase was 80 per cent. The increase in expenditure was also enormous. The figures for the first month of 1929 were £3 : 279,000. whereas for the same period in 1928 they were £1,680.000. Mr. Ansell said that while he thought no tears should be shed over the shelving of the Bill, they should endeavour to assist in evolving a system that would meet the difficulty which must be faced in the near future. This problem was being faced -in almost every country in the world from some angle. In Tasmania, where motor traffic ran parallel with a railway, it was penalised, but where it was acting as a feeder to the railway the licence fees were comparatively light. He thought that system might be put into operation in New Zealand. The tendency was to penalise fairly heavily types of vehicles which caused most damage to roads. The country could not continue to spend millions every year, and if motorists could stop the loss which was going on. they would do something worthy of their citizenship*