MOTOR-BUS SERVICES.

Otago Witness, Issue 3832, 23 August 1927, Page 55

MOTOR-BUS SERVICES.

COMPETITION WITH RAILWAYS. ACTION BY DEPARTMENT. WELLINGTON, August 19. For a considerable time past there has been a feeling among the proprietors of the motor buses operating between the city and the Hutt Valley that something was in the air as between them and the Railway Department, and recent developments have very definitely confirmed that feeling. In short, the Railway Department has suggested that the proprietors should sell out to it on valuation and without compensation, failing which tho department will, in all probabilty, set out to deal with the bus business in such a way that the machines will be driven off the road. For some time past, an informant stated, a tally of bus passengers had been kept by men detailed by the Railway Department, and presumably the department had now a fair working indication of the bus passenger traffic. A few days ago a railway officer in a high position interviewed him and suggested verbally only that he and the other proprietors should agree to sell their businesses to the department. The Railyway Department’s representative had stated that the same procedure as was adopted in the purchase of the buses running between Napier and Hastings would be followed — that compensation would not be paid—but that the machines would be purchased on valuation. “Such a purchase was, possibly, well enough in the case of the Hastings buses,” .said the busman, “but it would be a very different matter from our point of view. The Hastings buses were not a paying proposition, but ours are.” From further statements made during the interview with the railwayman, the busman gathered that the department hoped eventually to purchase all competing bus services in the Dominion. If the bus owners did not agree, then the attitude apparently was that the department would do one of two things—either seek power to send them off the roads or to put on more buses at cut fares to run them off the roads. The busman asked the railway official whether it would not be preferable from the department’s point of view as well as from that of the bus proprietors to pay the latter a decent price rather than to adopt a policy of cut-throat competition which must involve a heavy loss to the department. The answer given was that the department had looked into the figures and was prepared to stand the loss. It would not pay goodwill. The department’s refusal to consider anything for goodwill is based on the argument that the buses have come in and stolen the cream of the traffic.

The secretary of the Railway Board was asked for a departmental statement of the position to-day, but after the matter had been referred to the board, which was in session at the time, it was stated that the department wished to make no statement at all.