THE NEW RAILWAY TARIFF.

Hawke's Bay Herald, Volume XXII, Issue 7303, 27 October 1885, Page 4

THE NEW RAILWAY TARIFF.

Slß,— l bave examined this now tariff cursorily, and ag*in fail to detect any principle. Tho rate 3 seam all reckoned by a sort of rule of thumb. Where this j is the casa one would exp=ct to find great anomalies. I will instance ono. We will take a station GO miles from Napier and calculate the rates on flour, i It is in class R, and the ratj is 9j Ci i per ton. But if you send less than two tons it is in claa3 D, nnd the rate is 19s ■ lid per ton. Besides this, on the J Kapier section there is a rule that all ; claas D is charged as class C, which brings it up to 20 3 2d a ton. So here [ we have the absurd result that five bag« | coat per bag three times as much as 40 ■ bags. lam not sure whether this is tight, because on the Napier section class Eis charged 25 p£? cent, extra. : Making that correction, the man who orders a quarter of a ton per week pays at the rate of £1 Ga 2d, and the man •who orders two tons pays at the rate of lls lOid. I only instanco a quarter of a ton, because it is my usual order. Suppose I ordered ono ton, that would cost £1 6s 2d, while my neighbor who ordered two tons would pay £1 3a 93 for the lot. The anomaly itself in ridiculous, but what is worse is the complicated nature of the tariff. You observe above that everything is some- i thing else. Flour in first class E, then i D, then class C. Claas Eis not class X, > bnt 25 per cent. more. Very likely the \ general manager would tell you my ; calculations above are all wrong. i if they are? Life is not long enough to allow time to digest a new tariff of . this character every few months. I j may say that what I have always paid j for my five b,ig3 is 4=) lid, which ! agrees with none of the above calcula- ! tions. — I am, &c, W.F.H. :