THE KAIKORAI TRAMWAY SERVICE

Otago Daily Times, Issue 23690, 23 December 1938, Page 8

THE KAIKORAI TRAMWAY SERVICE

The fate of the cable car service, which for many years has operated from the Octagon, appears to have been sealed with the refusal of the Dunedin and Kaikorai Tramway Company to accept the City Council’s offer to purchase the company’s plant for £SOOO, plus valuation for rope, stock, and tools. The company has now been advised that it must comply with the'terms of its deed of dedication requiring that the tramway shall be taken up and the roadway put in order on the expiration of its franchise in May of the coming year. It is regrettable that a situation of this nature should have been allowed to arise in connection with a service that has operated both to the benefit of citizens and of the company itself. The Dunedin and Kaikorai Tram Company is, of course, perfectly entitled to refuse a sale to the city, if it is not satisfied with the terms offered to it, and presumably it considers that it can realise its assets at a figure higher than that which has been offered by the City Council. That is clearly its own business, and .it would be an impertinence to suggest that it does not know its own business best. But it is difficult to see that it has a great deal to gain by its rejection of the Council’s offer. The service, which was inaugurated and has always been conducted under licence from the civic authority, has proved a quite satisfactory investment for its shareholders. Through its fusal of the terms of a sale to the city the company may possibly put the Council—and in that case, the citizens who have made use of the Stuart streetKaikorai route —to some inconveni-

ence of a temporary nature. But it cannot hope to alter the determination of the Council, as a matter of fixed policy, to incorporate the transport service in this district within the extensive system conducted by the municipal authority.