THE New Zealand Herald AND DAILY SOUTHERN CROSS SATURDAY, OCTOBER 3, 1936. THE TRANSPORT PROBLEM

New Zealand Herald, Volume LXXIII, Issue 22540, 3 October 1936, Page 12

THE New Zealand Herald AND DAILY SOUTHERN CROSS SATURDAY, OCTOBER 3, 1936. THE TRANSPORT PROBLEM

Xi;w Zealand has just boon offered a scheme for the wholesale rationalising of industry under State direction. It. is instructive to turn from the elaborate provisions for investigation, statistical and otherwise, planning organisation, and standardisation, l>v which the Government in effect promises private industry an assured future, to the very casual way commitments are made in an industry in which the State is itself J deeply involved. This Government i had not been long in office before it ! set about completing three railway ! projects which had been categorically j condemned, and then discontinued, Iby a previous authority. There was j none of the elaborate process of | investigation which, under the pro- ! mised new policy, is likely to be j required before a fresh industrial i enterprise is started. The Govern- | merit, out of office, had said these i railways should be completed. ! Reaching office it began work withI out producing any evidence to prove ! the economic value, or even the [social importance, of any ono' of the i three lines. All was done by fiat, j Unfortunately there is nothing new i about this. It reproduces the j methods by which many lines have • been put in hand ever since the (scramble for railways entered New I Zealand politics. The advent of new I men. and new methods has made no ; difference. Neither is there any | sign of the profound change which | has come over the transport situai tion being properly appreciated, i The necessity for, and value of, j railway communication is being dis- ! cussed as though its chief rivals were i still the horse and waggon or the | coastal shipping of years gone by. | Abundant lip-service has been paid to the need for transport coI ordination, but remarkably little has ) been done to bring it about. This Government shows no more sign than its predecessors did of realising that it is late to consider transport co-ordination after railways have been built, roads made alongside of them, and perhaps huge sums sunk in harbour schemes meant to cater for directly competitive shipping services. The time to determine the relative parts which rail, road and sea should play in serving a given area is before embarking on expenditure for which the community must accept responsibility. Much has been done in the past without paying proper regard to these factors, but that is no excuse for continuing to do it now. In fact it condemns | present heedlessness all the more. The coming of air services has not been taken into noticeable account in deciding on new forms of land transport. Some seven years ago there was an extensive inquiry in Australia into the co-ordination of transport. "It is evident," said the Commonwealth committee which investigated, "that throughout Australia transport services have been provided whose capacity for movement of passengers and freight is greater than the business offering." If that has not been said in so many words of this country, it is perhaps because there has been no such inquiry. A year later the economics of Australian transport were reported on, extensively if unofficially, by a group of Australian economists. They accepted the thesis of oversupply in the transport field, and proceeded to analyse both causes and possible consequences. This has never been done systematically in New Zealand. What needs to be emphasised is that in this Australian survey roads, railways, harbours, shipping and air services were all included. Some attempt was made to assess the transport needs of the country, how they were being met, and what reinforcement, if any, the existing system required. In New Zealand it seems to be assumed that the more roads and railways there are the better it will be. There is certainly not the same enthusiasm for developing internal air services, but that can be attributed to lack of imagination far more than t,o any instinct of caution lest the supply of transport should already have outstripped the needs of the community. It should not need to be proved that there is no virtue in railways, or roads or ha.rbours, of themselves. The value lies in the traffic that speeds along the rails, rolls over the roads, or plies in and out of the harbours. The community is obviously far too small to use to capacity railways, roads and sea routes. If all of, them offer simultaneously it is certain there is wasteful overlapping. In the long run the least economic must go to the wall, but if this end is reached by open competition, heavy capital loss must be the result. No matter on whom it falls in the first instance, the community as a whole suffers eventually. Where two, or all three, forms of transport already offer, where capital has been sunk in them, the only policy is to make the best of what exists, to avoid capital loss so far as possible. But where railways have not yet been built, or roads have not yet been made, common sense surely demands a careful preliminary investigation to decide which would best serve the area affected, which offers the most economic service with the least capital outlay. This is particularly so when the whole problem of transport is in flux. So much is this the case that the Government would be wise to face its responsibility squarely and apply to its own proposed ventures in the transport industry the same conditions it is I prescribing for private industrial ' enterprise.