The Press Wednesday, June 3, 1925. Tramway Board.

Press, Volume LXI, Issue 18398, 3 June 1925, Page 8

The Press Wednesday, June 3, 1925. Tramway Board.

The letter which wo publish to-day from tho General Manager of the Tramways is a characteristic example of the Board's manner of conducting its business. Mr Thompson asks to be allowed to supply footnotes to all letters of criticism before they are printed in "The Press," and bases this extraordinary request on tho fact that the Board had to spend £4O on Tuesday in order to be ablo to reply to its critics in full. Mr Thompson knows very well that so far as "The Press" is concerned tho Board need not have spent anything at all in replying to its critics—that it was, in fact, invited to Teply and declined. For tho benefit of readers whose memories may be as short as Mr Thompson's we reprint the following passago from last Thursday's issue:

Since the Christchurch TramwayBoard announced its new scale of fares, a good deal of criticism has been aroused, and for this the correspondence columns of tho newspapers are becoming a safety-valve. In view of tho general, nature of the protests, a reporter of "The Press" yesterday' asked the General Manager (Mr Frank Thompson) whether he would comment upon the points raised by .Mr A. F. Wright, of the Canterbury Progress League (who suggested in a letter to "The Press" yesterday that a big saving could bo made in revenue by tho elimination of many unnecessary stops), and upon the comparisons with receipts and expenditure per car mile in other centres quoted by Mr H. Pearco in his statement to the Board on Monday. Mr Thompson declined. "If I wero to set out and reply to all the statements that are made by correspondents, I would bo occupying more of my time than I can afford to spare," he said, in explanation. "You can say that the chairman of ,the Board will reply—from the chair—next Monday, and,until then.no comment will be made in any direction."

It is quite well known also to the Board, and to Mr Thompson, that our columns have been, and still are, open for replies in tho usual way, and that we have been careful to delete anything in the letters published that seemed unfair criticism of individuals. The fact that tho Board had to spend £4O in getting a verbatim report of Monday's meeting into tho four Christchurch newspapers was unusual .nor unfair. Apart from the fact that the Board's reply was nearly three columns long, it contained references to letters which, though they had appoared in one paper, had not appeared in more than one, and it is altogether contrary to newspaper practice to give space for comment on the contents of another journal. The Board knew that before it made the decision to issue one statement only, and Mr Thompson knew it before he sent us the letter that appears in this issue. The simple fact is, the Manager did not wish to answer the questions put to him by our representative last week, and neither he nor the Board has attempted to answer them yet. On the Board's own showing Christchurch has a sufficient margin between receipts and running expenses to make a profit out of the system if the overhead charges are not excessive. The permit margin in Auckland, Wellington, /and Dunedin is 6d. In Christchurch, according to the Board's statement, it is and we are not surprised that Mr Thompson did not care to explain why on those figures the only altcrna- [ tive to an increase in fares is a call on the ratepayers. We are not surprised either that he was not anxious to say why, instead of pestering the public with its halfpenny levy—an increase that can neither be equitably applied nor conveniently paid and collected—the Board did not shorten the sections slightly and keep the fares at tho original figure. What surprises us is that having refused to answer questions of real importance last week, and having failed to answer them since, the Board should be cool enough to demand privileges now that are never accorded to any public body, and to base its claim to those privileges on our alleged inhospitality to it on Tuesday morning.