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FREE RAILWAYS.

(To the Editor.) Sj r> -At the present time our country" is faced with declining prices for our produce and there are indications of stagnation of business. It is a good opportunity for our .business men to very carefully take stock of our general position and see. if improvements cannot be made with regard to production and distribution of wealth. We are an agricultural country depending almost entirely upon agricultural produce. We are handicapped with high-price land, high-price labour, and high transport cost to the world’s market. It is a very omportand and serious question as to how we can increase our agricultural production and reduce general costings. Land settlement, better farming and cheap transport are amongst the most important subjects that arc and ought lo be considered. Dealing with the last of these, a crave your indulgence to suggest a drastic change in the general conditions governing our railways. This suggestion I believe to be based upon good sound business principles. I suggest for considreation that our railroads, like our public roads, should be run free for passengers and goods. For some considerable time the public lias been informed of the unsatisfactory returns obtained ' for the capital cost of our railways. We have altered the management, revised the tariff, run Sunday and other excursions, and still we are faced with financial and trade losses. We have in New Zealand two lines of roads, a railroad built specially to carry heavy traffic. We run alongside light roads for our light traffic. In the attempt we make our railways pay the complicated system of charges, freight and fares have become so unsatisfactory that it is paying motor traffic to successfully compete with our railways. Huge sums of money are being invested in unnecessary motor vehicles with their costly upkeep. Other huge sums are being spent upon repairing the damage to the roads caused by these motors. All this is an unnecessary national loss and -is ever congesting our roads with the resultant serious accidents and annoyance, whilst our railroads are running with less and less business and ever-increasing overhead charges. In the early commercial days of Great Britain the country was handioapped for the want of roads and a progressive policy of roading was begun. The policy adopted was to make the roads self-supporting. Toll-gates weer erected and toll was imposed upon the vehicles according to the number of h-orses used. There was a lot of trouble and friction and toll or tariff was continually being altered and revised. The whole system was a failure and the country was kept handicapped; prograss was blocked for the want of roads. Common sense prevailed, and in spile of the ridicule and opposition the roads were thrown open free to the public, the cost was borne equitably by the people, and the question was solved for all times. The only logical and businesslike act is to remove the toll-gates of tariffs from our railways, run them free both for freight and passengers, which would at once boom our agricultural development through lower costings. I am aware of the difference in the conditions pertaining in Great Britain to that of New Zealand, but it will be seen that the condition is even more favourable for free railways in New Zealand than at home. The closelysettled country of Britain has been more favourbale to the tariff principle, but even here the motor traffic is successfully competing against the railways owing to the tariff being unreasonably high, and Great Britain will have to taokle this question, as the same serious national loss is pertaining through the motor competition. Our railroad requirements differ from the Old Country inasmuch as our requirements are to open up desirable agricultural lands and a railroad has frequently to traverse many miles of unprofitable country to reach more fertile land further on, thus making a big mileage charge with no revenue from the unworkable country passed through. To expect to make the railways pay under these conditions is more unreasonable than to make the roads pay in the old days by way of toll-gates. | -j ■ We have businesslike examples of the soundness of the policy for free railways. In the United States buildings are erected with scores of stories high, containing many expensive elevators both for freight and passengers. No charge is made for the use of these perpendicular railways, and to do so is a foregone conclusion that it would be a financial failure. Our railways are horizontal elevators and exactly the same prindple pertains. We endeavoured at one time to measure out and charge the housewife for every drop of water she used, with the result that so little was used that the want of cleanliness brought about diseases and so we supplied the householder with free water for all they could consume and covered the cost on the general purse.—l am, etc., Hamilton, March 17. P. G. ALLSOP.

Permanent link to this item
Hononga pūmau ki tēnei tūemi

https://paperspast.natlib.govt.nz/newspapers/WT19300318.2.101.1

Bibliographic details
Ngā taipitopito pukapuka

Waikato Times, Volume 107, Issue 17972, 18 March 1930, Page 9

Word count
Tapeke kupu
820

FREE RAILWAYS. Waikato Times, Volume 107, Issue 17972, 18 March 1930, Page 9

FREE RAILWAYS. Waikato Times, Volume 107, Issue 17972, 18 March 1930, Page 9

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