NEW ZEALAND RAILWAYS

Evening Post, Volume CIII, Issue 129, 3 June 1922, Page 6

NEW ZEALAND RAILWAYS

10 IHE EDITOR.

Sir,—Our C.T. friends have discussed the "losses" in connection with running of our railways, arid, have even advocated that we sell our railways to the highest bidder. It is expected that the Railways Accounts will show an excess of revenue over expenditure sufficient to pay interest at current rates on the capital invested. Fair enough,:- provided' the account were credited with all the value that a railway through virgin, country creates. . ' . j ■• "..In ascertaining what constitutes the capital sum on which interest should be paid, it ia generally overlooked that a sum far greater than the capital cost is the measure of the betterment in land values alono that has accrued through the construction of the railways. We sees trucks of firewood arrive from as far afield as Raetihi. How much of this would be marketed were there no main trunk line? All along the railway routes are farms and thriving townships. Would they he there with no railway? No, sir, "the millions spent on railway construction have fructified.. The bread cast upon the waters has returned a hundredfold. ' The millions are still in the! country, with manifold increase, in the shape of these happy centres of human activity. We see sawmills convert thousands of acres of bush into valuable timber that in the absence of a railroad would be sent up. in the smoke of the bush burn.

Before the'advent of the iron trail, bush land was costing £5 per acre to' fell and burn for grass; the valuable first crop, ,in many cases ; the best crop, being turned into smoke. After railroad connection was made, similar bush land was bringing the owner £5 an acre in timber royalties. The State railways created this value, as well as saving the expense of felling and burning; but no credit is shown in the Railway Accounts On that head. . '

t To any traveller but a commercial one, it would appear probable that tha capital cost of the- railways'on which interest.is fairly chargeable would be the sum of nothing. The State ; railways were schemed by Vogel and built by his successors for the use of the people, not to be tied up to rot. The interest charge is to be met whether the track' is used or not, so let the people use their property and have done with the matter. , If the C.T.s wish to exercise their grey matter, let them devise some means whereby the community, and not the individual, would benefit by the increase in land values ■ created by the expenditure, of public money.—l am, etc., THADY THE GANDER.