POWER FOR TRAMWAYS.

New Zealand Herald, Volume LXI, Issue 18696, 30 April 1924, Page 8

POWER FOR TRAMWAYS.

When the Auckland Power Board was discussing the' unfortunate delay to traftiway traffic at Ellerslie on Easter Saturday, .an extraordinary tone manifested itself. The public is not interested in the mass of technicalities produced to explain —or obscurethe causes behind the delay. Its chief concern is to have an assurance that there will be no repetition of that day's happening. From part of the discussion, which fortunately did not pass unchallenged, there seemed little promise of such assurance. It was suggested by the board's engineer that in future the tramway department should so regulate race-day traffic as not to cause " an unreasonable load on the sub-station and its feeders by moving too many cars together." In this amazing attitude he was supported by the chairman, who said the department " should see that a certain number of cars got away earlier, instead of all switching on at once." The engineer and chairman apparently expect the department to carry the public away from the races before the public is ready to leave, They forget it is none of their business how the traffic is handled. Their business is to supply the tramways with power when and where it is needed. This the board has undertaken to do. If the board is incapable of fulfilling its contract, it had better say so, frankly and definitely. The public and the City Council will then know what to think and what to do. Huge crowds travelled to and from the races during the Christmas holidays, and there was no trouble of the kind that developed on Easter Saturday. Only since April 1 has it been seriously argued that people should leave the course while the races are in progress, lest there should be too great a consumption of current in carrying them. The position is utterly untenable, as some members of the board evidently recognised. What the Power Board has to include in its general policy is a realisation that it owes a duty to the public, a duty which cannot be discharged by producing a mass of technicalities masking arguments as amazing as those heard at this week's meeting.