MORE CORRESPONDENCE

Evening Post, Volume CX, Issue 47, 23 August 1930, Page 10

MORE CORRESPONDENCE

DO PRIVATE LINES PAY?

OBSERVATION EUIsS

A Wellington city business man with an extensive knowledge of transport problems, speaking to a "Post" reporter to-day, remarked that the table of figures relating to bus business in last evening's "Post" had certainly come as an eye-opener, even to those who had realised that Wellington's transport problems, like those of every other centre, were pretty severe. "But," he said, "it is difficult to reconcile the facts that not one of the council's bus services go anywhere near paying its way, and that two private companies, one running to Karori and the other up the steep hill routes to Ngaio and Khandallah, are quite obviously 'making a do of it.' It would be particularly interesting to compare the percentage losses on the council's lines with what we may :saf ely presume to be the percentage gains on those outside services, if only the figures were available."

Auckland's experience under council management—after the council had bought the private machines out —was unhappily just what Wellington is now experiencing, he continued. There had been a steady loss on nearly every line. The Transport Board had seemingly not been able to do any better, but admittedly the Auckland Council (and later the Transport Board) had been heavily handicapped by the fact that old crocks had been taken over at de luxe prices. By its recent action, however, the Auckland Transport Board had practically admitted that private enterprise could succeed where public management must fail, for on several lines it had agreed to the issue of licences to private individuals, making a condition that these people should buy out the machines on those runs. Thus private enterprise also started away with the handicap of old buses—which in many cases would simply have to be scrapped —but was still hopeful of standing up to the job and making money out of it. DOG-IN-THE-MANGER POLICY. "It is quite unlikely, however, that the Wellington City Council would ever agree to such a course, though it appears obviously reasonable and quite worth a trial, for the dog-in-the-manger policy has been demonstrated too frequently already, as in the attempt to freeze out the Karori bus, first by refusing licences for additional buses, then by counter bus services (which did not pay), its proposal to squeeze out the company operating on the Khandallah Tun, and most glaringly in its determination to kill the latter company's observation bus business. A LUXURY SERVICE. "It is very noticeable indeed that no figures have ever been given .as regards this observation bus business, for there is little doubt that this service, too, results in a substantial dead loss to the Corporation, which must be made up, of "course, as in tho case of other bus losses, from tramway profits. Day after day theso observation buses, very fine machines they are, start away with a passenger load that cannot possibly pay. Not by any stretch of imagination caii it be maintained that this is an essential city service (it a time when things are prosperous, let aloue when finance is, on the Mayor's showing, exceedingly bad, and in any case the observation business was adequately and excellently catered for by private enterprise before ever the council thought about it. .. "The outcry made by tho council when private buses entered into competition with tramway services a fewyears ago was loud and long, yet m this luxury business the council had no compunction in stepping in and in carrying on to the detriment of public transport finance, and—though this is, of course, of no interest to the council— to the detriment of the company s finances also."