The Auckland Star: WITH WHICH ARE INCORPORATED The Evening News, Morning News The Echo and The Sun. MONDAY. OCTOBER 10, 1932. THE MEW REGIME.

Auckland Star, Volume LXIII, Issue 240, 10 October 1932, Page 6

The Auckland Star: WITH WHICH ARE INCORPORATED The Evening News, Morning News The Echo and The Sun.

MONDAY. OCTOBER 10, 1932. THE MEW REGIME.

Tor the cause that lacks assistance, For the wrong that need* resistance, For fhe future in the distance, And the good that «r« can do.

Because it is the first report of the kind put out by the Railways Board, the review of railways operations for the financial year 1931-2 is exceptionally interesting. The aims and achievements of the non-political regime are presented clearly. The problem set the Board is to make the railways pay, or at least to reduce the deficit, in a time of depression when competition is fierce and the country has not yet determined upon a complete policy of transport control. Tackling this problem energetically, the Board has brought down expenditure below the fall in revenue, and at the same time has kept before it the ideal of improved service. The percentage of total working expenses to gross earnings has fallen appreciably. Moreover, this trend continues, for in the current year, up to the middle of September, there has been a reduction of nearly £300,000 in the expenditure and an improvement of £(55,000 m the net revenue.

The Board's experience with fares is highly interesting. It found that higher fares had cost the railways business, so charges were lowered, with "distinctly encouraging" results. The Board has striven to improve its services in various directions, and one may note especially the success of catering for the "mass" at cheap rates. The report breathes the new spirit of accommodation and enterprise that has been instilled into the Department of recent years, and the opinion may be ventured that among the public there is a good deal less criticism of the system than there has been in the past. The Department, however, is still burdened with a mass of uneconomic capital. What branch lines mean in the accounting of the system is shown by these two facts:: they are only 28 per cent of the mileage, but their loss is 40 per cent of the total deficit. Clearly there are some branch lines that must be closed if the communities they serve do not support them better. Finally, it must be noted that the Board agreed to the completion of the StratfordOkahukura line only after "a good deal of anxious consideration," and that this decision implies giving the line a monopoly of transport in the district.