The Tramway Board

Press, Volume LXXXV, Issue 25736, 23 February 1949, Page 4

The Tramway Board

Humanitarians might be moved by the sufferings of the Labour members of the Christchurch Tramway Board. Since they won control of the board last November; they have been badgered, goaded, and tormented by the surviving Citizens’ Association members of the old board, who want them to declare their plans for the future of the public transport system. The cruelty of this, of course, is that the Labour members have no plans—unless a promise to reduce fares, to keep rates down, and to see what can be done with 40 trolley-buses is a plan. And it is just as cruel to drive the Labour members to prepare plans—to take the place of those they persuaded the ratepayers to reject—when they would obviously much prefer to unload the task, which they themselves have made so much more difficult, on to the City Council. Nothing in the discussion at the meeting on Monday suggests that the new board has the least idea where it is going. Just as Labour members at a previous meeting had to be reminded that they were committed by their election promises to reduce the fares, so at this meeting one who spoke hopefully of trams being preferred in Melbourne and Pretoria had to be reminded that he and his colleagues were committed to trolley-buses. One member seemed to think that the whole case for trolley-buses and against diesel buses was ‘electricity versus “foreign fuel”; and that, because it is “ the policy of the party to “ live within the country the suitability of diesel buses in a wideflung and (comparatively) thinlypopulated city need not be considered at all. Some Christchurch voters, if not public transport passengers, may be reassured by Mr J. E. Jones’s assertion that the Labour Party has never done anything wrong and never can. If they are, they will have persuaded themselves that an adequate and efficient transport system will emerge from such muddied and trackless thinking; and they will deserve all the comfort of this conviction, and its future harvest.

All things considered, it is best that the present board should be allowed to mark time until the findings of the Local Government Commission are known. If the verdict is amalgamation, the board will then be able to throw in its hand as Labour members want to do; and the task of reorganisation will pass to a body which will not be deterred, by fear of losing political “ face ”, from turning the exhaustive and conscientious work of the old board to the advantage of the city. If the verdict is against amalgamation, the board will have to get down to work on the task for which it has so far shown little enthusiasm and less ability. The Citizens’ Association members of the board, in the meantime, could cease their baiting of the helpless and defenceless. The game cannot be justified even by the last-ditch arguments for hunting and coursing —that the fox and the hare enjoy the sport.