SUBURBAN RAILWAY FARES.

New Zealand Herald, Volume LXVI, Issue 20363, 18 September 1929, Page 14

SUBURBAN RAILWAY FARES.

Sir, —Railways can be made to pay only by attention to their own business of transport. If they are to bo used as agents of social reform or for vote-catch-ing, they cannot be expected to pay. "Impatient" in his letter to the Herald suggests that they should be used for such fantastic schemes as clearing >slums and rewarding the settlers of Waitakere for their enterprise and self-denial. The result of cheaper fares to Waitakere will be dearer land there, which, to new settlers in that district, will offset tho benefit of cheap fares. Yet to bring about this absurd result "Impatient" would have the general taxpayer bear the burden of providing transport below cost to a few privileged workers living there. "Impatient" assumes that the workmen's weekly ticket shows a profit to the department. If it does, then other regular passengers are being charged exorbitant fares. If, of course, the function of a railway is to encourage early rising, the difference, in some cases 100 per cent., between the price of a worker's weekly and an ordinary weekly, is fully justified. From the point of view of one running the railways purely as an instrument of transport, it seems that traffic .would hardly increase if the uneconomic worker's fare was abolished and a universal weekly ticket at a somewhat higher figure issued. At present it is cheaper to travel by bus after 8 a.m., with consequent loss to tho railways. Panmure.