TRANSPORT CONTROL.

Evening Star, Issue 20980, 19 December 1931, Page 20

TRANSPORT CONTROL.

TO TUB EDITOH. Sir, —Since returning to New Zealand several months ago, I have been careful to notice unfair and unwarranted competition by trucks, buses, and service cars, which should be stopped for the sake of economy and for the good of our country. Let mo quote, for example (not referring to any person or company) : Smith has been a truck driver. He has saved money and become a truck owner. He goes into the contracting business and competes with the railways. He carries goods anywhere, for anybody; and when business is dull he accepts almost any price. As a driver, Smith has worked for wages; as an owner ho pays wages and is dazzled by tho sums he handles, and imagines he is getting rich. But he experiences jncreasing difficulties in meeting his obligations. Bills he has not figured on fall due. At last his debts are so bothersome that he has to sell his business or go bankrupt and get out of it. Smith is a fair example of the comparatively new and erratic competition which our railways are called upon to meet. Is ho making transportation cheaper? Is he likely to? •Railways are seeking business to-day upon the bedrock basis of rendering more service at lower cost than carrying companies. Some companies are beating them, and the railways know it. Which, in fact, is the more efficient? Upon an equal footing there is hardly any product anywhere in this country that our railways cannot and will not handle or transport on the long run, and on the short run cheaper, faster, and; with greater satisfaction 'to the public than can carrying companies. Our railways publish jfcheir; which W& strictly, adhered

to. Railway employees work regular hours per day (eight hours or so), whilst carriers may work as long as their strength lasts. Railway wages are virtually fixed by the Government, not by the carrying companies. Our railways serve all alike, but carriers may pick and choose customers. Our railways must operate in good weather and bad; carriers can please themselves. On the short run carriers are very efficient. On the long run they cannot maintain themselves against our railways. Buses and service cars have had a phenomenal growth during the past ten years. They have carried further the process begun bv the private car, and have cut off a great slice of the railway passenger business. What the railways have lost with private cars is lost—not because the latter are cheaper, but because they are so convenient and useful after the traveller gets to his destination. Buses and service cars, however, are a different matter. In the large they offer neither natural ecomony, speed, comfort, convenience, nor service comparable to our railways. Buses and service cars should be natural feeders and complements to our railways, not rivals. What it all comes to is this: No method has been found to carry more cheaply and satisfactorily, in the bzroad view, than our railways. Some particular jobs can be done better in other ways. But our railways are the backbone of transportation in this country, and so £ar as we can see always will be. Trucks, buses, and service cars present a false_ appearance of economy, capturing business to which jthey are not economically entitled.: In

any case, our railways should have a« opportunity to compete on an equal basis. They ask nothing more. When,' they have that, the public will know, where and how it is best served. —I amj Perot A. Staotok* December 17.