RAILWAY OR ROAD.

New Zealand Herald, Volume LXVI, Issue 20203, 13 March 1929, Page 12

RAILWAY OR ROAD.

NEED OR PUMICE LAND.:

CHEAPER FREIGHT BY RAIL.

MANURES, STOCK AND TIMBER.

The Government, announcing its decision not to proceed with the RotoruaTaupo railway, states the provision of a good road will more than meet transport needs for many years to come. The district is already served by a road which, although for parts of its length surfaced with pumice, is seldom anything but well conditioned for the traffic it carries, but investigators of conditions at first hand always meet with the plea of the settler for cheaper freights on manures and other farm reauirements The relative cost and value of a new and better road, or a railway, through the territory, have been studied in detail by commissions and experts through the controversial life of the railway project.

The former Prime Minister, the Rt. Hon. J. G. Coates, in announcing last June the decision of Cabinet to proceed with the railway, said two commissions of inquiry had endorsed the action then decided upon. The question of providing a road sufficiently strong to carry the loads necessary for economic transportation in tho future had been very thoroughly gone into, and the decision was in favour of transportation by rail. The successful working of large areas of forest land in tho locality depended largely on cheap transport, and a railway would also provide the cheapest form of transport for tho thousands of tons of fertilisers necessary for tho development of theso lands before any real progress could be made. Freight on Fertilisers. Mr. Coates' statement regarding tho transport needs of tho forest areas and tho cheap transport of manures—the latter a 1 benefit conferred by the State upon settlers everywhere a New Zealand railroad runs—sums up the opinion of farmers throughout the Rotorua-Taupo district. The great mass of their published statements on the situation bears persistent reference to tho high cost of fertilisers motor-freighted to them from the Rotorua railhead or from even further afield, and fertilisers are the very lifeblood, arid always will be, of the pumice land.

Settlors with years of experience of the cost of carting manures, fencing material and stores, over the main road to their holdings, will visualise no very great economic benefit from the construction of even the highest class of concrete road. A benefit it naturally would be, but where top-dressing is more than anywhere else in New Zealand the dominating farming practice, it would be difficult to make a favourable comparison with a railroad. Nor would the comparison be bettered from the point of view of settlers in middistricts like Reporoa, where the sending of fat stock to the Rotorua railhead means a drive of several days with damaging losses in condition. It could hardly be suggested that motor stock trucks could in this direction show an advantage over the railway. Road and Rail Costs. Sponsors of the rail project have stated, too, on good authority, that the cost of constructing a concrete highway over the pumice country, in an area with so little available metal of quality, and so far distant from road-making centres, would alter the usual ratio of cost of a railway and road material in favour of the former. Even to dismiss the question of the relative economic benefits of a road arid a railway to the settlers of the pumice lands docs not dispose of the fact that the projected line would have served a far greater proportion of State interests than probably any other New Zealand railway. The great afforested areas from Rotorua to Waiotapu and on the Kaiangaroa Plains, along the route, must demand great transport facilities in a few years. Already, on the word of highly competent experts, the older forests nearest Rotorua, are suffering from lack of thinning, and those further south are fast approaching the thinning stage. It has been authoritatively stated it is tho profitable use of thinnings which makes afforestation really profitable, and the volume of motor traffic which would ba required to deal with this section of freight alone, would quickly become immense.

Much of the land which would bo served by a railway, and which already has a very fair road connection, is Crown property, but apart from that aspect it is admitted that practically all of the 1,250,000 to 2,000,000 acres on the route will ultimately have to be developed, indirectly at least, by Government money. That has been made one of the strongest arguments for a railway. The cheapening of the cost of development, particularly through the transport of manures and fencing material, is the great factor upon which hinges the future of the pumice country.