HOLIDAY TRAFFIC

Gisborne Herald, Volume LXXIII, Issue 21922, 17 January 1946, Page 4

HOLIDAY TRAFFIC

RAILWAY TREND EVENNESS OF SPREAD MORE CIVILIAN TRAVEL (P A.) WELLINGTON, Jan. 17. The outstanding feature of the holiday railway traffic had been the evenness of its spread, said the Minister of Railways, Mr. R. Semple, yesterday. Although fewer passengers were carried than in the war years, the bookings this time were well ahead of those for the last Christmas and the New Year before the war.

It had been thought that the loss of Christmas leave traffic from troops in training might have been almost balanced by the travel of oversea servicemen and servicewomen recently recently returned and now on demobilisation leave, but most, of those seemed to have stayed at home for the holidays or not to have moved far by rail. Civilian travel this year showed an increase. December 21 was a big travelling day, with the folowing day a close second. Christmas Eve was relatively slack all over the country.

“Homeward traffic has been spread yet more,” continued Mr. Semple. “Whereas formerly a short rush set in immediately after New Year’s Day, this year we had a plateau rather than a peak of business. Even now, in midJanuary, passenger travel is unusually heavy.

“Everywhere the happiest spirit has prevailed. As Minister, I should like to thank those thousands of railway men and women for whom the general holidays mean harder work and longer hours for the effort they made.

“The experience we have gained of new trends in holiday travel will be valuable when we come to make plans for next Christmas, by which time some of the leeway of the war will have been made up in our building programme and the railways will be even better placed than they have been this year to serve the growing body of customers.”