Hokitika Guardian & Evening Star. And Evening Star, with which is incorporated the West Coast Times. TUESDAY, AUGUST 6, 1929. THE STATE RAILWAYS.

Hokitika Guardian, 6 August 1929, Page 4

Hokitika Guardian & Evening Star. And Evening Star, with which is incorporated the West Coast Times. TUESDAY, AUGUST 6, 1929. THE STATE RAILWAYS.

An important leature of the Budget speech of Sir Joseph Ward was that which related to the question of railway 'finance. The railway system 1 , constructed at a cost of fifty-seven millions, renders a valuable service to the community. It is a service, however, that nowadays is not appreciated as it should be. Otherwise, it would not involve the country in the loss that is disclosed by the figures. Approximately the disclosed loss on the operations of the system for the past year was £930,000, but the Railways Department has not been required to carry certain expenses, which, Sir Joseph Ward implies, might legitimately be charged against it, and the warning was conveyed in the Budget that, if the present drift is allowed to go on, the taxpayers will have, in a few years’ time, to find not less a sum than £2,000,000 per annum in order to meet the railway deficit. Clearly, a position of this kind demands the application of some remedy. The effectiveness of the remedy which the Government proposes to apply remains to be seen. It consists in part in the abolition of some of the existing branch lines of railway which are now described as obsolescent, and in a determination to bi.nld no more branch lines where motor services will suffice for the requirements df a district. It consists, also, in part in a decision to . write down the railway capital by the amount, totalling about eight millions, which has been contributed out of tlie revenue account to the Public Works Fund, and to discontinue the practice of transferring sums from revenue to the loan account. It is further proposed to continue the policy of the Reform Government which was directed to a co-ordination of railway and motor services with a view to the elimination .of wasteful competition. The explanation of the trouble with which the railway system is afflicted, is, the Prime Minister says, to be found it} a decline in the passenger traffic. That decline is clearly to be attributed to the development of motor' transport. The shrinkage in the revenue from passenger traffic, which was quoted by Sir Joseph Ward represents, however, only a fraction of the loss that is incurred on the railway system. Other factors have to be taken into consideration, such as the increase in the construction costs from £12,106 per open mile in 1920 to £17,210 in 1929, and the reduction in net earnings'per open mile from £551 in 1920 to £353 in 1929, These are factors that should certainly cause the Government to pause before it commits the country to any fresh railway programme that provides for the completion of half a dozen lines of railway, nearly every one of which will, if completed, be operated at a seriously heavy loss. The proposal to spend ten millions of money upon the construction,; by an enormously costly method, of lines that will never, under existing conditions, secure traffic sufficient to meet the interest on the capital cost is so remarkable argues the Otago Times in its criticism, as to be explicable only on grounds of present political expediency. It has to be borne in mind, however, that the present proposals are for the linking up of main trunk Ijines so as to assure through rail traffic, while the Government has had the courage to stop wasteful expenditure on branch lines. Nothing proposed, however, even in regard to main trunk lines, approaches the cost repealed in connection with some of the railway works put through by the late Government in the North Island. A main trunk railway is always capable of steady development, as witness the example of the East and West Coast railway on which so much North Island opposition was vented.