RAILWAY CHARGES

Wairarapa Times-Age, 31 May 1939, Page 5

RAILWAY CHARGES

CONCESSION PROMISED ELIMINATION OF HIGHER CLASSES. STATEMENT BY GENERAL MANAGER. (By Telegraph—Press Associations WELLINGTON, This Day. An announcement about freight charges was made by the General Manager of Railways, Mr G. H. Mackley, in an address at Victoria University College last night. Speaking of action taken by the department to meet new conditions, Mr Mackley said that a new and interesting method —at least to railway administration —would be brought into operation soon, when the 4 classifications ' under .which general merchandise had hitherto been charged would be reduced to two. The higher classes A and B would be eliminated, leaving only the lower classes C and D. This would mean not only a concession to the community gener- i

ally, but a long looked for simplification of the railway tariff. .

As in practically every other country, land transport in New Zealand was not the monopoly of the railways. While in the past, as now, competition by shipping services continued to be a by no means negligible factor in its effect on railway operations, the major problem of competition as its affected railways today was that presented by the rapid development of road transport in opposition to rail services.

The Government had put into effect a policy designed to secure the co-ordination of the transport units operating over the principal routes throughout the Dominion and, in pursuance of that policy, had authorised the purchase of 54 road services operating on routes in direct and longdistance competition with the railfways. The great majority of these services had already been acquired and had passed into the control of the Railways Department. Apart from the road goods services taken over and operated by the department in pursuance of the Government’s general transport policy, the management had from time to time, in conformity with Government policy, interested itself in the matter of the purchase of road passenger services where it had been shown that it would be in the public interest for these services to be controlled and operated in conjunction with rail services. A considerable number of passenger services in various parts had, with the approval of Cabinet, been acquired by voluntary agreement between the. department and the vendoit Today the department was the largest operator of both goods and passenger road transport services in the Dominion, and had demonstrated that its administration of road services compar- < ed favourably with that of private en- , terprise, both with respect to the standard of service given and the conditions of employment particularly.