FRENCH RAILWAYS.

Manawatu Standard, Volume LIV, Issue 170, 19 June 1934, Page 7

FRENCH RAILWAYS.

ECONOMY PLANS. A saving of £25,000,000 a year is expected to result from two important decrees affecting the organisation of French railways, says the Paris correspondent of the London Daily Telegraph. They were submitted to the President for his signature by M. Flandin, Minister of Public Works, at a Council of Ministers. Drastic action has long been considered necessary, for the deficit accumulated in ten years by the railways amounts to nearly £200,000,000. It has been calculated that m recent years money has been lost at the rate of £125,000 a day. On a gold basis expenses have increased by more than 50 per cent, since the war. One of the decrees prepared by M. Flandin deals with the co ordination of"* rail and road transport. Long-distance journeys are reserved exclusively for the railways, and in local transport owners of road vehicles are to be allowed much more freedom. - _ On local lines the railway authorises will be allowed to run only goods trains and rail buses—vehicles resembling road coaches, in which passengers can be carried for short distances—and the companies will not be permitted to organise auxiliary road services. Representatives of rail and road interests will lie expected to reach an agreement among themselves, but if they fail to do so a committee will examine their differences, and the Minister of Public Works will act as referee. The decision will probably reduce the number of railway employees by 60.000. Another decree modifies the regulations dealing with the retirement of railway employees, and proposes wage reductions ranging from 5 to 10 per cent. The National Union for Professional Defence of Railwaymen issued a protest against the economies.