TRANSPORT SERVICES

Otago Daily Times, Issue 21409, 10 August 1931, Page 8

TRANSPORT SERVICES

OBJECTS OF LICENSING BILL ELIMINATION OF WASTEFUL COMPETITION. (Pee United Press Association.) WELLINGTON, August 8. The Minister of Transport (Mr W. A. Veitch), in an interview to-day, said that so far as the Transport Licensing Bill, applied to existing services there was no justification for the assertion that the Bill was designed to bolster up the railways. It was designed, he said, to protect the public and see that the means of transport, both publicly and privately owned, were utilised to provide a necessary and desirable service for the people. One of the clauses of the Bill provides that a passenger service license shall not be refused in any case where the applicant wds carrying on the service on April 1, 1931, provided it is not in competition with a service licensed under the Motor Omnibus Traffic Act. The clause, however, does not provide that services commencing after April 1, 1931, shall be refused a license. The licensing authorities in all such cases must take into account the matters contained in another clause, which, in short, make it necessary for the applicant to show that the ser-\ vice is necessary or desirable in the public interest. If the licensing authority decides that the service is not necessary or desirable in the public interest it shall refuse to grant a license, in which case the applicant would have the right of appeal to a statutory appeal board constituted under the Bill, and the decision of the board would be final. If the Appeal Board were to allow the appeal it would then be necessary for the licensing authority to grant a license. The Minister added that it might bo said that well-established services were prima facie necessary or desirable in the public interest,, otherwise they would not have obtained continued public patronage. It was well known that under the existing conditions an enormous amount of unnecessary vehicle mileage was being run, involving high road maintenance costs and destructive rate-cutting, and adding generally to the unit cost of the Dominion’s transport. Economic reductions were not possible under present conditions owing to the absence of the legislative proposals contained in the Bill. The road operators themselves were quite unahle to co-ordinate, since others promptly put on services to replace any that were taken off by the present owners for the purpose of reducing the services to something more akin to reasonable re-