Railway Finance.

Press, Volume LVII, Issue 17220, 10 August 1921, Page 6

Railway Finance.

Our Wellington correspondent quotes the Acting-Minister of Railways as saying that the reduction of railway services on non-paying lines will mean a saving of not less than £IOO,OOO a year, and that the reduction had been contemplated for some time. ,Mr Guthrie's use of an actual figure suggests that his Departmental officers have furnished him with detailed estimates;, and, if this is the case; the Minister will be well-advised to give these details to the public. There are some service*—tha Springfield-Oxford service is an example—which can be cut out .without any loss Any service which, actually costs* more to. run, than itcyiel^m r dead Joss, and there'would be a profit in cutting it; out; provided that there was an excess of expenditure iffi running it, even after leaving the charges out of account. . But there, are; many "un"profitable" services which it .would be better to maintain than to drop. For example; suppose that, the total cost of any particular service is £IOO, of which the fixed and overhead charges account for £SO, the revenue amounting to £9O. There is a loss of £lO in running that service.! But if it ia cut out there is obviously a loss of £6jo. The railway management-hag for so many years .been poor that it is difficult to feel vbMdent that the .Department has car&ully weighed even such obvious "considerations as that. The public as a whole is .perfectly ready to give the .Government credit' for its efforts to save money, and ia anxious to believe that this scheme really will have the' results expected. Here and there, to be'sure, one finds uplifted the querulous voice of disappointed and despairing enemies of the Government, whose only | lore ia the rule "Condemn the Govern-1 "ment in any case"—embittered lib-! erals who would have condemned the | wholesale- dismissal of employees that j they recommend, if, the Government , had decided upon such a measure, just as'eagerly as .they condemn the measure actually adopted. But, as we have said, very few people attend to 'these monotonous voices. The publio is quite- willing to' give the Government's'decision fair play, but it would like to feel more sure than it does that the Department has given-the problem honest and thorough consideration.

The opinion is widely held that the railways cannot ever be placed on a thoroughly Bound footing until the method of controls entirely changed. The Department is suffering from those principles of management that grew tip under the Liberal Administrations, which ilsed this and other State Departments as instruments' of patronage, and- which used to denounce the idea that the 'railways ought; to pay their way. Twenty years of that sort of thing killed the Department's capacity to manage the system oh modern business principles, and there is little ground for supposing that the system can be run as a modern and progressive undertaking so long as the method of control established 25 years ago by the Seddon Government is maintained. The railways can become self-support-ing, and reach the highest level of usefulness, only by being placed in private hands, or by being .placed under .the control of independent experts responsible only to Parliament. The drift of the railway should appear to the .Government to be a signal for something much more fundamental in the way of a remedy then the temporary, suspension of some of the services in the hope of reducing the losa by a small amount.