The Evening Star SATURDAY, AUGUST 14, 1926. RAILWAY EXTENSIONS.

Evening Star, Issue 19328, 14 August 1926, Page 6

The Evening Star SATURDAY, AUGUST 14, 1926. RAILWAY EXTENSIONS.

The Minister of Public Works (Mr Williams) was not willing to commit himself to an Otago deputation which waited on him yesterday urging the extension of the Otago Central Railway from Cromwell to Luggate. The Prime Minister, though he professed an open mind, was more discouraging than encouraging to a deputation of South Island parliamentarians who urged the of the South Island Main Trunk line". The development of motor transport makes a new factor, and an all important one, which Governments of the present day must consider before they embark on the construction of now railways. When the cry for an extension of the Otago Central Railway was renewed and made the subject of a campaign twelve months ago we raised the point whether it might not be more to the interest of the settlers if a first-class motor road wore pro? vided for them with Government assistance. They would be likely to get it sooner and at less cost to the dominion as a whole. We suggested that the Railway Department itself might run motors upon it, which would be wholly in accordance with the latest policy that has been announced by the department, and so try out the relative merits of road and rail transport. That suggestion was not welcomed by those who had set them hearts upon the railway, and developments which immediately followed suggested that, after all, they might not be asking for more than they had a prospect of obtaining. When a deputation waited on the Prime Minister he did not nil© ont the railway. He treated it as a project equally worthy of consideration with that of a modern road, though his answer was qualified by a statement that if the railway wore built it might bo necessary for the settlers to pay double freights on it. And when reports by departmental experts were published later as appendices to the Public Works Statement their opinions were still divided between the road and the railway. The inspecting engineer advised a road, at least as the first step. The district engineer preferred a railway, but advised road improvement in the

first place. The engineer-in-chief dealt only with the railway, without envisaging it as an early probability, and with the suggestion of special charges. Before he could be more definite he required more information as to prospects from the Railway and the Agricultural Departments, and there the matter has stood till the present time. Mr Williams will confer now with Mr Goates. The cost of the railway would be ten times that of the road. It would still appear that if the settlers had concentrated from the first on a road they might have been nearer to an improvement of their transport facilities. The argument for motor transportas an alternative has its least forco in lelation to the completion of the South Island Main Trunk. The argument for that construction is that it is a national work; that the railway system of the dominion is hampered and impaired in its whole efficiency while it is broken into two systems by the railway break between Parnassus and Wharenui. That case was pressed with the greatest emphasis by the FayRaven Commission, which wont beyond the ordinary scope of its report to press it. Sir Sam Fay and Sir Vincent Raven strongly urged that the gap should be abolished, with future provision of a train forry between Picton and Wellington. A committee of the Canterbury Progress League went over the route, and published a pamphlet which made the strongest case for completion of the line. Its estimate of returns was based on the assumption that from the outset at least a third of present passengers between Wellington and Lyttelton would prefer the railway to the steamers. Allowing three hours for the ferry steamer trip between Wellington and Picton, half an hour for entraining or detraining, and an eight-hour journey overland, it forecasted a total of 11£ hours for the combined ferry and train journey. But a committee consisting of two experts of the department, Mr S. E. Fay and Mr E. Casey, has condemned this proposal as economically unsound. By an odd coincidence,*it falls to Mr Fay to combat the favorable impression which was caused by the report which was largely his father's. The Railway Board, in endorsing these most recent findings (not so recent, since they frore prepared a year ago, though they are only published in this year's Railway Statement), holds that the Progress League over-estimated the passenger traffic that would be diverted—made it thre? times too large. Fares would be dearer by the suggested service, but it is to be presumed that the league took that into consideration. And the Railway Board estimates the time required for the journey—train and ferry passages—at no less than twenty hours. The Progress League, for that matter, based its cost of the completion of the railway line—£2,176,000—by which the charge for interest would be ruled, on the official figures of the Public Works Department, though it believed the department's estimates to be too high." Examination plainly is needed where these reports differ. The Prime Minister stated that he has an open mind, and that the matter is being investigated. The Progress League also will investigate it. Meanwhile, the line has a gap of eighty-one miles in it, and there is no profit in broken lines. Some day it will have to be completed, though that time may not come just yet.