TAKING THE LONG VIEW

Evening Post, Volume CX, Issue 83, 4 October 1930, Page 8

TAKING THE LONG VIEW

"At the same time as the Legislature is authorising the construction of new lines (states the report of the Railways Commission), further expenditure is being made on roads which in many cases run parallel to and serve the same area as the rail, with the result that the Department is called upon to operate a line that prior to being taken over has lost to competitors a certain amount of traffic that economically should be. rail traffic." In these words the Commission shows the failure of Governments, present and past, to take the long view and the wide view of transport needs. There is a saying that it is better to build a fence at the top of a precipice than to establish an ambulance at the bottom. What New Zealand has been doing for several years past has been to form a new precipice, debate the desirability of erecting a fence at the top, and post a notice at the bottom advising victims where there is an ambulance station. The logical and reasonable method of preventing the extension of road-rail duplication is to begin co-ordination at the construction end, not to provide parallel road and railway, and then say: "How shall we keep the traffic off the road?"

Such co-ordination, the obvious need of which was pointed out by Sir' Joseph Ward in his last Budget, will not solve the problem, as it exists to-day, but it will check the extension of. the trouble. In some places road and rail must run parallel. Local requirements necessitate this. It then becomes necessary to institute control which will limit abuse of these duplicated means of travel. Such control may hinder the introduction or extension of the more convenient means of transport, but economy as well as convenience must be studied. It is possible to be too expensively up-to-date in our methods—to us& a motor-lorry where the old farm cart would do the work at less cost. As an illustration, the Commission'anticipates that the estimated saving in the new railway workshops will be more than counterbalanced by increased overhead charges. We do not know whether this is correct, but there is no doubt that the saving effected through the adoption of modern transport means is.in many instances more than counterbalanced by the overhead expenses incurred to make such saving possible. That: overhead expenses must be paid in rates, taxes, and railway losses; but the Government has postponed adoption of the only means of imposing a check-—trans-port control. It is indicative of the paramount economic importance of transport co-ordination that Sir Otto Niemeyer emphasises it particularly" in his report to the Government.