The Gisborne Times PUBLISHED EVERY MORNING GIBBOBNE, APRIL 5, 1906. THE EAST COAST LINE.

Gisborne Times, Volume XXII, Issue 1716, 5 April 1906, Page 2

The Gisborne Times PUBLISHED EVERY MORNING GIBBOBNE, APRIL 5, 1906. THE EAST COAST LINE.

Increasing interest in the subject of railway connection between Auckland and Gisborne is being aroused. In another article on the subject the N.Z. Herald states :—The connection of Auckland with the East Coast and the opening up to settlement of the rich lands in that direction is rapidly becoming one of the leading railway questions of the colony For while the richer lands of the South Island are so well supplied with railway facilities that the Government is being driven to advocato the construction of lines that cannot pay for generations, and will hardly assist settlement at all, the richest parts of Auckland Province are still railless and almost roadless, and largely tied up in Maori lands. aThe article on the Mamaku route appears in.. the New Zealand Herald, and will be read with interest. The difficulty in connection with an East Coast railway is not that a good ■route is hard to find, but that a variety of profitable routes offer themselves, leading to the conclusion that when the North receives the fair consideration which is its due we shall have as many railways as the South and much more profitable ones. For we maintain most emphatically that no railways ought to bo built which cannot pay, and that the first railways to be built after the great trunk lines are those which open up large areas of land to settlement. This ought to be a national policy, accepted without demur by all parties and in every part of the colony. But what do we find ? We find that large sums are appropriated annually for lines that do not fulfil these elementary conditions, while districts like those of the East Coast receive little consideration. The arousing of an intelligent public interest is the. first step towards an alteration in this expensive and ruinous railway policy, and we hope to see a keener interest taken in tho matter, not only on the East Coast, but in Auckland City and in the colony generally. The opening to profitable settlement of idle lands is to the national benefit, and there is no loss in the construction of railways that assist in that operation, while urban populations ought to realise by now that the land is the great source of all wealth, and that towns and cities cannot fiourish unless the land is brought into profitable use