FALLING IN THE GAPS.

Auckland Star, Volume LX, Issue 123, 27 May 1929, Page 5

FALLING IN THE GAPS.

LONG-DISTANCE RAILWAYS, GOVERNMENT'S INTENTIONS. TARANAKI-AUCKLAND LINE. (By Telegraph.—Press Association.) BLENHEIM, Sunday. "You will have your railway all right and so will Nelson and the West Coast. We will finish the North Island lines, too," declared the Prime Minister, Sir Joseph Ward, when speaking at a civic reception last night.

Sir Joseph recalled tliat Sir Julius Vogel in the "seventies," had proclaimed that trunk railways should be made from end to end of New Zealand and side lines should conic in as required. For some unaccountable reason the South Island Main Trunk-line had been stopped when only 53 miles from Picton. The' Government proposed to pick up the work where it had stopped, obliterate the gap from the map and put the railway into operation. It would do the same with the West Coast to Nelson line. In three or four years the South Island Main Trunk lino would be finished. The Prime Minister said that at present lie was balancing, against the other, the routes for the proposed line between Taranaki and Auckland, which would mean a saving o'f one clay in travelling and a reduction in freight charges between the two The actual cost of the five long-distance railways it was proposed to complete would he' onlv £7.500,000, leaving £2,500,000 to overhead charges, engines, trucks and carriages. The country should leave tancc lines. They should never be made" again, and some that were laid down should be stopped. The loss could not be allowed to go on. They could not possibly compete with motor traffic.