ROAD TRANSPORT

Otago Daily Times, Issue 22042, 26 August 1933, Page 6

ROAD TRANSPORT

ELIMINATION OF SERVICES CRITICISM OF RAILWAYS DEPARTMENT. . (Per United Papss Association.) AUCKLAND, August 25. Comment on the attitude of the Railways Department to road services was made by Mr L. Alderton, of the Transport Appeal Board, in dissenting from a majority decision of the board. Mr Alderton said the opposition of the department to road services in the southern suburban and outer suburban Auckland area constituted an endeavour to force co-ordination with the railway. The operators were asked to accept tho unprofitable portion of the journey, and the department made no serious attempt to show that the curtailed road service could he made payable. One of the greatest difficulties confronting the Appeal Board was the fact that the Railways Department apparently failed, or refused, to admit the limitations of the railroad. Until it did admit them it. was impossible to obtain harmonious or effectual co-ordination between essential road and rail services. It was politic to consider how far the travelling public could be coerced by the decisions of the Appeal Board given in response to vailway appeals. It might well result in the alienation of public sympathy which the department, like all transport operators, could ill afford to lose. Ho believed that attempted co-ordination would only cause the much increased use of private ears.