The Evening Star THURSDAY, NOVEMBER 18, 1926. AN UNLUCKY DEAL.

Evening Star, Issue 19409, 18 November 1926, Page 6

The Evening Star THURSDAY, NOVEMBER 18, 1926. AN UNLUCKY DEAL.

The town clerk’s minute on the municipal trading departments’ results for the half-year ended on September 30 is explanatory where explanation was needed. After the financial year, ended on March 31, what may be termed a boom budget was issued. Because of the Exhibition, revenue was buoyant and profits were exceptional. The revenue is still buoyant. Receipts from trams, electricity, gas, and water were all up as compared with the corresponding six months of 1925, For one thing the closing stages of the Exhibition fell within the half-year, and this gave a fillip to the corporation’s takings. But this is very much more than offset by the greatly increased expenditure incurred, no less than £45,038 being the rise in the outgoings as compared with the 1925 half-year. A good deal of that expenditure was really overdue —that is, it should have been undertaken previously, aud not postponed. And some of it was premature —that is, it could have been had it not been that the City Corporation undertook the major share of. providing work for local unemployed. It can at least be said that the citizens have been frankly treated. They may have suffered a shock in learning, for example, that the net profits from the tramways were down to £414 for the six months, whereas in the previous twelve months they wore as high as £38,176. But the fact has not been concealed, and adequate enough reasons have been given for the dramatic contrast, unless it is insisted that there might have been a separate statement of the results of the experiment in running motor buses as adjuncts to the tram service.' It has now become generally recognised how bad a deal was made over the raunicipalisation of the Roslyn trams. In his minute the town clerk does not remind the council or the ratepayers of the terms in which he reported on the proposal to purchase. Time is proving that he was right, and the tramways manager was wrong, both as to the system’s earning capacity and its condition from the mechanical point of view. Money has been freely expended on it to bring it from a deplorable state to one of efficiency. And it is yet doubtful whether the system is ever going to make financially worth while what was positively imperative from the viewpoint of public safety. Indeed, so far as the electrified part of this system is concerned the town clerk’s minute reads as though it would he better to scrap it and, presumably, turn the traffic over to motor buses. One could speak more confidently on this if the Roslyn tramway figures were separated in respect of cable and electric sections,’ and it the city tramway figures were also separated in respect of trams and motor buses. We should probably not be far wrong in venturing the guess that

the Eoslyn tramway presents to the corporation the toughest nut among ifa trading concerns, both as to the handling of the rush hours traffic and the renovation of a system which it now seems would have been dear at almost any price. It is almost a heroic undertaking to attempt to perform this out of revenue, but, in view of the advice it gave as to the purchase, the tramways administration can have no grievance over the adoption of this policy. Tho fact remains that the corporation has had to add sixpence to. every shilling of the Roslyn tram purchase money to maintain a service,, still open to serious criticism, during the sis years since municipalisation took place.