Wairoa-Gisborne Railway.

Dominion, Volume 27, Issue 280, 23 August 1934, Page 11

Wairoa-Gisborne Railway.

Sir, —Might I ask a little of your space' to have a say on this subject. In the last report of the Railways Board, in reply to representations by the local committee, it is stated that the population to use the line averages 431 to the. mile. We have it on the authority ot the Hon. Minister of Public Works in a speech at Rangiora on February 9, 1886, that at that time the Napier-Woodville district had only a population of 171 to the mile of line. Foxton-New Plymouth served a population of 173 to the mile, and both these lines had then, been open for years. Had our present Railways Board then had the say probably neither of these lines would have been built. When the line was extended from Woodville, it served a population of 16,600, whereas, according to the Railways Board’s own figures the extension to Wairoa will serve a total of 10,000 people along the line, and 21,000 beyond the railhead. Compared with the pluck which the people of Canterbury exhibited in the ’sixties when they commenced the Lytte.ton tunnel, the building of this railway is a bagatelle. Look at the millions that have been spent on roads and bridges, with the knowledge that they would yield no direct revenue, but that, on the contrary, their maintenance would involve a huge annual cost. But in the case of this railway we. get for a few thousand pounds a mile a practical monopoly traffic.

We want the people, not only of the East Coast, but of New Zealand in favour of this railway, and as time goes on a veritable phalanx should be formed by the Railway League which must sweep opposition from the path and culminate in the realisation of our hopes of justice to Wairoa and the country to the north. Thirty years ago the statesmen of the time saw fit to start a work on which £4,000,000 have been spent, but the caution of our present-day politicians will not face the expenditure of a tenth of a million, to complete the work tt> Wairoa.—-I am, etc., FANGSCREW. Gisborne, August 20.