SOUTH ISLAND RAILWAYS.

Otago Daily Times, Issue 19760, 10 April 1926, Page 10

SOUTH ISLAND RAILWAYS.

The conference of the South Island Progress Leagues achieved a creditable performance in compromise when it agreed to represent to the Government that it was desirable that the construction of both the South Island

Main Trunk railway and the railway from Glcnhope to Murchison should be expedited. But it is to be soprehended that a compromise which is so obvious will scarcely impress the Government very strongly. On the other hand, if the Government were to pay due heed to the resolutions of the co.-.orence to the extent of impartially dividing its energies between the two lines of railway, it is likely that the construction of both would continue to be a tardy business. If the South Island Progress Leagues could agree that either the Main Trunk line to Blenheim or the West Coast line to Nelson was the line that should be the first to be constructed and if they could consequently go to the Government and request it to concentrate its efforts on the construction ot that line, some tangible result might be accomplished by them. But to recommend lines to the favourable consideration of the Government is to invite the reply that, although the early completion of one line may be necessary, there is no apparent need for the early completion of both lines. They will provide alternative routes to Cook Strait which will then be crossed In effect they will be competing linos. They will provide alternative routes to Cook Strait which will then be crossed by a short seavoyage. There is no reasonable ground for the expectation that both lines w»;i be profit-earning and it is even doubtful whether either of them will be. But of the two, the line from Parnassus to ■ Ward has the superior, claims to Ministerial consideration. The gap that has to be filled is longer on this line than the gap between Glenhope and Murchison, but the line presents the more direct, or rather the less indirect, form of communication with a prospective short railway-ferry service, and this fact led the Railway Commission, composed- of Sir Sam Fay and Sir Vincent Raven, to express last, year a conviction that the East Coast line should be completed. “It is,” the Commissioners said in their report, “not so much in the local advantage of such a line that we view its completion as of greater importance than some other railways upon which considerable sums have been spent: it is because of the possibilities offered by its construction of having a complete railway transport system between all parts of the North and South Islands without change of carriage in the case of passengers or break of bulk or delay in the incidence of goods traffic that we advocate its construction. ... . The sooner it is done, looked at from a railway administration point of view only, the earlier will be the time when it will be possible to operate the system as a whole as economically and efficiently as in countries where lines are not disjointed.”