I.—6b,

6

Table of Passenger Fares for the whole of the Auckland Section of Railways. All goods rates would be calculated in the same manner.

All that would be required in actual working would be a printed copy or copies of it for each station. These could easily be supplied in a day; and yet Mr. Hudson was not ashamed to give evidence that, " on serious consideration," he did not think this information could be supplied in less than a year. Mr. Flatman : Your table serves the same purpose as the departmental table ? Mr. Vaile : Yes, it serves the same purpose; yet I was deliberately told by the railway officials that neither the people nor the railway officials would be able to read it. I hope there will be questions asked of me which will elicit a good deal of what I have passed over. To give the passenger fares from every station to every station on the Auckland or any other section, my distance-plan should be printed and pasted up at every station, with the addition that the firstclass fare is 6d. and second-class fare 4d. per stage. There is all the information there in my table to calculate the distance on. A system like that, where a child could go up to the station and read it, would greatly assist travelling and travellers. There was a long discussion went on about the increased cost of carrying the two passengers for the one fare. I contended that practically there would be no increased cost. This statement was strongly combated ; but you see what experience has shown. I had nothing but my own theory and calculations to guide me, but the experience of Hungary has shown again that lam right. For many years there was practically no increase in the cost'of carrying the people there, and they carried four for every one previously. In the course of examination of Mr. Hannay I elicited this information : " That it would cost £55,000 per annum extra to double the passenger traffic on the Hurunui-Bluff main line only from Waikari to Bluff, without any provision for increased trains on the branches, being nearly half of the whole section, and that they would require to run 312,000 extra train-miles per annum." Then, in the same parliamentary paper—l.-9, 1886—there are the following questions and answers in reference to the evidence given by Mr. Hannay: "601. Mr. Vaile (to Mr. Hannay): Do you consider that our rolling-stock is now fully employed?" A. Certainly not; that is to say, every wagon and every carriage is not run every day full." Q. " Nor anything like full ?" A. "No." Q. "Do you think they run half full, taking the rolling-stock all round?" A. "It is fairly employed. In order to give a definite answer to this, I might say that the average number of passengers which are carried on the Hurunui-Bluff line is seven to each carriage." Q. "That shows that they are not a quarter full? " A. " Yes ; but you must not entertain the idea that I do not think the carriages are not fairly employed." Q. " You say that the average is seven to a carriage? " A. " Yes." Most of these" carriages are capable of seating forty passengers, and Mr. Hannay thinks them "fairly employed" when only carrying seven. Now, I want to draw the Committee's attention to what actually occurred. Not long after giving this evidence Mr. Hannay was appointed one of our Eailway Commissioners, and then this is what happened : during their five years' term of office as Commissioners they actually did an extra business that was equal to carrying an average of 5,178,000 passengers per annum. They also during this period worked on an average two hundred more miles of railway per annum than was open during the previous five years. To do this large amount of extra work they found it necessary to increase the workingexpenses only £28,878, and the train-mileage only 22,457 miles per annum. The actual average annual increase of work done was as follows : Two hundred miles more of railway were opened and worked ; 298,277 more passengers were carried; 325,292 more tons of goods and live-stock were carried. The tonnage and extra passengers actually carried are equal to _ 5,177,657 extra passengers, and there were the two hundred extra miles of railway to be worked in addition. In 1885 the average cost of working each mile of railway was £480. Two hundred miles at £480 per mile is £96,000; but the Commissioners only spent £29,000 per annum extra, so _we see that, if their former expenditure was necessary, while these gentlemen were irresponsible Commissioners, for the sake of making it appear that they earned a trifle more interest, they starved our railways to the extent of £70,000 per annum; and, in addition, they further pressed them to an extent equal to carrying 5,200,000 extra passengers per annum. In 1885 the average number of tram-miles run on every mile of railway open was 1,951. This for two hundred extra miles would involve 390,200 extra train-miles per annum ; but the Commissioners contrived to get through with only 22,457 extra miles, and also did the extra work mentioned above. These, then, are the indisputable facts, and yet Mr. Hannay told the Eailway Committee of 1886 that merely to carry another 1,500,000 on the best constructed line in the colony would cost £55,000, and necessitate running 312,000 extra train-miles. I think lam justified in saying that the evidence given certainly misled the Committee. That wa3 the evidence

No. of Stages. First-class Fare. Second-class Fare. of Stages. First-class Fare. Second-class Fare. -76 -n 3/6 2/4 11--/8 4/2/8 1/6 1/4/6 a/1/4 10 5/3/4 2/6 1/8 11 5/6 3/8 2/12 6/- */-