BUSES AND RAILWAY.

New Zealand Herald, Volume LXIV, Issue 19720, 20 August 1927, Page 13

BUSES AND RAILWAY.

HUTT VALLEY SERVICES. DEPARTMENT MAY STEP IN. UNWELCOME COMPETITION. [BY TELEGRAPH. —OWN CORRESPONDENT. ] WELLINGTON, Friday. For a considerable time past there has been a feeling among proprietors of motor-buses operating between the city and the Hutt Valley that something was in the air, and recent developments have very definitely confirmed that feeling. In short, the Railway Department has suggested that the proprietors should sell out to it on valuation and without compensation, failing which the department will in all probability set out to deal with the bus business in such a way that the buses will be driven off the road. For some time past, stated an informant, a tally of bus passengers has been kept by men detailed by the Railway Department, and presumably the department had now a fair working indication of bus passenger traffic. A few days ago a railway officer in a high position interviewed him and suggested that he and other proprietors should agree to sell their businesses to the department. The Railway Department's representative had stated that the same procedure as was adopted in the purchase of buses running between Napier and Hastings would be followed, that compensation would not be paid, but that the machines would be purchased on valuation. "Such a purchase was possibly well enough in the case of the Hastings buses," said the busman, "but it would be a very different matter from our point of view. The Hastings buses were not a paying proposition, ours are. From further statements made during the interview, I gathered that eventually the department hoped to purchase all competing bus services in the Dominion. If we do not agree, then the attitude apparently is that the department will do one of two things, either seek power to send us off the roads or put on more buses at cutfares to run us off the roads. "I asked then whether it would not be preferable from the department's point of view, as well as from our own, to pay us a decent price rather than adopt a policy of cut-throat competition, which must involve a heavy loss to the department. The answer was given that the department had looked into the figures and was prepared to stand the loss. It would not pay goodwill. The department's refusal "to consider anything for goodwill is based on the argument that the buses have come in and stolen the cream of the traffic." The secretary of the Railway Board was asked for a departmental statement of the position to-day, but after the matter had been referred to the board, which was in session at the time, it was stated that the department wished to make no statement at all.