THE New Zealand Herald AND DAILY SOUTHERN CROSS. THURSDAY, JANUARY 16, 1908. RAILWAY MANAGEMENT.

New Zealand Herald, Volume XLV, Issue 13648, 16 January 1908, Page 4

THE New Zealand Herald AND DAILY SOUTHERN CROSS. THURSDAY, JANUARY 16, 1908. RAILWAY MANAGEMENT.

In spite of repeated deputations to Ministers, constant complaints and perennial protests, the Railway Department remains unable to meet the requirements of the travelling public. Its rolling stock is utterly inadequate for a business that is steadily increasing and would increase still more-rapidly if it were not checked and hampered by chronic mismanagement. The general effect of this is to be seen in the otherwise unreasonable and inexplicable refusal of the Department to improve the many services which have fallen behind the needs of the times. A particular effect is visible in the almost daily overcrowding of such trains as the Rotorua Express, which may be accepted as one of the services for which the working officials do their best, but which is usually a woeful example of how the Government can neglect their duty. On sections of the Main Line, as has been complained of by Mr. Stead, of Christchurch, no first-class accommodation is provided, although first-class rates are advertised and charged. And though the great development of Auckland Province accentuates the local shortage in railway equipment, the rest of the Dominion is more or less suffering in the same manner and from the same causes. Excuses may be made for the conversion of trucks into pas-senger-conveyances upon extraordinary occasions, though we may well urge that a thoroughly equipped railway system would maintain a reserve of carriages for occasions that cease to be extraordinary when they recur a dozen times in the year. But no excuse whatever can be made for the sending away, daily and for a prolonged period, of trains like the Rotorua Express so inadequately coached that women and children have to be crowded into the carriages and paying passengers have to stand on platforms and in the aisles. After many futile attempts to obtain more trucks for the constant traffic necessities of the commercial community, it was finally confessed that the railway managers were refused adequate support by the Government and that the only solution of the difficulty was to apply pressure upon Parliament so that sufficient money might be voted to provide rolling stock, known by the authorities to be urgently needed. Is not the passenger branch of the railways in identically the same position? If the inner mysteries were unveiled is it not practically certain that the working officials are thoroughly aware of Departmental shortcomings, but find themselves unable to overcome the monumental inertia of the political administration

For continued shortage of passenger carriages and of the necessary haulage power there is absolutely no excuse during such a period of prosperity as* that which has now been experienced for many years. A sudden and unanticipated expansion of business may temporarily hamper and handicap the best managed railway in the world, but our New Zealand expansion is neither sudden nor unanticipated ; it is the very reverse. Year after year the same story has been told, the same prospects foreseen, the same results experienced. Yet there is more shortage than ever, judging by the refusal of timetable improvements, and. by the chronically choked condition of great trains. We shall be informed that the railway workshops throughout the Dominion are working day and night; and that. all their overtime does not enable them to keep pace with requirements. But would such an excuse be thought of in a private business, would it be tolerated indefinitely if the railways were not a State monopoly ? We . all know that workshops which are not large enough can be enlarged; and that relief from their congestion could be found by calling for tenders from private firms ; and that if New Zealand could not supply its own needs it is quite easy for the Government either to import rolling stock or to import shop-plant and skilled workmen. For, as we have said, this shortage is old, not new; and is one which is likely to last for generations unless some intelligent and energetic action is taken to remedy it. Moreover, it will certainly become even worse the moment the Auckland-Wellington connection is completed. That will throw into use a great stretch of line now comparatively unused, will divert a great stream of travel to the Main Trunk railway. And one has only to look at the packed expresses running on tbe-firotorua line to imagine what will happen next year. Improvements in the time-table, clamoured for in almost every district affected by the railway system of the Dominion, will be even more impossible than they are to-day. All because of the hopelessly bad management of the Railway Department.

Owned as they are by the State and thus freed as they are from the immediate financial difficulties of private railway enterprises, the New Zealand railways ought to be,among the best equipped and most progressively conducted systems in the world. We" might fairly expect that the railway authorities would have approaching requirements constantly in mind and would take both pride and pleasure in keeping well abreast of the expansion in business that arose from the settlement of the country, and from the steadily increasing attractions of our great holiday resorts. As things are, however, settlement is hampered, development checked and travel made unpopular, by the unbusinesslike refusal of the Government to provide the railways with adequate plant, even after they have spent large sums in laying down lines. The Rofcorua line, for example, is not

earning what it might easily be made to earn, for indifference to the comfort of the travelling public invariably reacts upon a route J and the same may be said of most other lines throughout the Dominion, for during the summer months it is the rule rather than the exception for railway accommodation to be insufficient. What would be said if the railways were in private hands, and if the public wore thus treated '{ At once we should have a great public agitation; the Premier would proclaim that Parliament would have to interfere; on every hand, it would be the text of socialistic addresses and be quoted as proof of the superiority of State ownership and control/ And we have State ownership and control! The public is nominally master of this mismanaged Railway Department, which has so long been notoriously under-equipped and un-der-staffed ; the Premier could interfere effectively without being revolutionary ; Parliament can do as it pleases and pleases to do practically nothing. And we have the cheerless outlook that instead of any improvement being probable, the position must become steadily worse as long as the expansion of the country proceeds at a greater rate than the present provision-for expansion made by the Department.