A HIGH STANDARD

Evening Post, Volume CXXX, Issue 107, 1 November 1940, Page 9

A HIGH STANDARD

BUT UNSETTLING FACTORS

"The industry is maintaining its high standard of service and making every possible improvement as opportunity occurs," states the annual report of the New Zealand Road Transport Alliance. "There have been difficulties, caused mostly by differing opinions or viewpoints jor by individual business commitments. There has, too, been distrust and uncertainty caused by the attempts in some official circles to dictate capital mergers as being the only means of attaining the efficiency desired while others express entirely different policy.

"But it is most unsettling to find now that the greatest difficulties and greatest source of concern arise from outside the industry. Undue emphasis on mergers, the fear in some quarters of socialisation by the Government, opposition by sections of users and ancillary owners, differences regarding price fixation, together with official vacillation and general doubt regarding the petrol position, have all combined to bring about disturbance among transport operators, users, and the general public, which renders it in our opinion most necessary for this unsatisfactory position and feeling to be remedied and confidence reestablished all round."

Referring to co-ordination of transport, the report added that much of the agreed-on recommendations of the important March, 1939, conference on road-rail co-ordination has been put into effect. The Railway Department had actively co-operated and though much more remained to be done, considerable progress in co-operative arrangements between road services and the rail had been effected in various parts of the Dominion.