LOCAL BODY TRADING.

Auckland Star, Volume LXIII, Issue 134, 8 June 1932, Page 6

LOCAL BODY TRADING.

It was rather fortunate that the accounts and estimates of the Auckland Electric Power Board and the Auckland Transport Board happened to be presented to the public at the same time, for it enabled the community to note the contrast in the prospects. The former board proposes to reduce its charges, but the latter to increase its fares. It is often said that comparisons are odious, but in th'is case a comparison ought to be very useful, for it exposes the dangers from uneconomic exploitation. The Power Board's electricity is primarily in competition with gas, and to a minor degree with candles, kerosene and carbide, but while the manufacturers or distributors ofi the four latter utilities pay their full share of rates and taxes the former pays neither, and on top of this it is now suggested that electricity should receive further concessions in Customs duties on plant. Surely there is nothing more calculated to encourage the undue development of any utility than to give it preferential treatment over others, especially when it means that the others have to pay extra, to make up for what the one escapes. The Transport Board is in exactly the opposite position, for it pays the whole of its own expenses, besides the maintenance of eighteen feet of roadway for the benefit of its competitors, motor transport, while the latter does not even wholly pay for the rest of the track that it uses, leaving the ratepayers to carry most of the cost. It seems a fair assumption that motor traffic, chiefly in private cars, has been unduly developed by this preferential treatment, but there again, as in the case of electricity and gas, none can say whether the development is economic or uneconomic until both sides are put on exactly the same footing in every respect. VIATOR.