CHAMBER OF COMMERCE

Southland Times, Issue 21198, 26 September 1930, Page 5

CHAMBER OF COMMERCE

Fortnightly meeting of council. QUESTION OF MAIL SERVICE; The. fortnightly meeting of the council of the Invercargill Chamber of Commerce was held yesterday. There were present: Messrs D. J. Wesney (chairman), H.-S. Cordery, A. 11. Mackrell, J. H. Reed, W. T. Johnston, D. Rutledge, G. Glen, C. B. Tapley, T. S. Tomlinson, W. A. Ott, J. Pickard, J. S. Brass, J. R. Hamilton, C. Bradfield. The Minister of Internal Affairs (the Hon. P. A. de la Perrelle) wrote congratulating the chamber upon its enterprise in organizing an Industries Week in Invercargill. The writer stated that he had seen reports in regard to the week and he was assured that excellent work had been done which should have had the desired effect of increasing the attention of the public to the desirability of purchasing New Zealand made goods.' Tfie work of the Industries Committee, with Mr J. W. Smith as chairman and Mr A. L. Adamson as secretary, was to be commenced. Mr Vincent Ward, M.P., wrote regarding the mail service to and from Invercargill and enclosed a report from the General Manager of Railways (Mr H. H. Sterling) to the Minister (the Hon. W. A. Veitch), The writer suggested as a solution of the difficulty that the Post Office run a postal van on Wednesday and Friday to and from Invercargill. The general manager’s report stated: Further to our discussion of yesterday in connection with the representations made by Mr V. Ward, M.P., regarding the alteration to the South Island express train ( service in order to meet the needs of the Invercargill people in the matter of mail services, I desire to say that I have gone carefully into the matter and the position may be stated as follows: At present there is a through service from Invercargill to Christchurch, leaving Invercargill on Sunday nights at 6.40 and reaching Christchurch at 7.18 next morning. There is likewise a train leaving Christchurch on Sunday night connecting at Dunedin with the 8.33 a.m. Dunedin-Invercargill mail next morning and arriving at Invercargill at 1.10 p.m. on Monday. This latter train more particularly serves the passengers arriving from the North Island by the ferrysteamer on Sunday mornings and also, of course, takes the mails arriving by the same boat. On Tuesdays, Thursdays and Saturday's the through express leaves Invercargill at 7 a.m. and goes right through to Lyttelton connecting with the ferry boat for the North Island. In the. reverse direction, the through train runs on the same days, namely, Tuesdays, Thursdays and Saturdays leaving Christchurch at 8.35 a.m. after connecting with the ferry- boat from the. North Island and arriving at Invercargill at 9.5 p.m. On Wednesdays and Fridays there is no through service between Invercargill and the North Island and it is this fact that has given rise to the present

request. In response to a communication from you asking for a concrete suggestion, the Invercargill Chamber of Commerce suggested that the mail train which leaves Invercargill at 1.45 p.m. on Mondays, Wednesdays and Fridays for Dunedin and the 8.40 a.m. mail train from Dunedin to Christchurch on the same days be cut out and the through train which leaves Invercargill on Tuesdays, Thursdays and Saturdays at 7 a.m. as above mentioned and runs right through to Lyttelton on those days should also be run on Mondays, Wednesdays and Fridays. Similarly in the reverse direction it was suggested that the mail train which leaves Christchurch at 12.25 p.m. on Wednesday-s and Fridays and arrives at Dunedin at 8.58 p.m. ’ and the mail train which leaves Dunedin at 8.33 a.m. and arrives at Invercargill at 1.10 p.m. on Mondays, Wednesdays and Fridays should be cut out and the through express train which leaves Christchurch on Tuesdays, Thursdays and Saturdays at 8.35 a.m. arriving in Invercargill at 9.5 p.m. should be substituted for these mail trains on Wednesdays and Fridays. The design of these proposals was to give the Invercargill people a mail service to and from the North Island on Wednesdays and Fridays as well as on the other days of the week. Unfortunatelythere are substantial objections from a publie convenience point of view to the adoption of the proposals. The mail trains serve stations which are not served by the through express trains and to run the through express trains daily and eliminate the mail trains would mean entirely- depriving those stations of any express train services at all. The alternative would be to stop the through express trains at all the stations at which the mail trains now stop. The time of arrival at Lyttelton is definitely fixed by the time of departure of the ferry boat; likewise the time of the departure of the train from Christchurch southward is fixed by the time of the arrival of the ferry boat. In the northward direction, to add the additional stops to the through train would necessitate that train commencing its run from Invercargill about an hour earlier than at present. This would, so far as passenger traffic is concerned, be a distinctly- retrograde step. In former times this train left Invercargill at 6.10 a.m. and this was regarded as wholly unacceptable and finally by the speeding up of the train we were practically compelled, in the interests of our passenger business, to obtain a later starting time, namely-, 7 a.m. To go back to the earlier time by putIting mpre stops on to this train would, I repeat, be a distinctly retrograde step and

would, I am satisfied, only be avoiding the difficulty in regard to mails by creating another difficulty in regard to passengers. Nor does this objection conclude the matter. There is not the slightest doubt that if the through trains were required to serve all the stations that are now served by the mail and express trains, the train would become unwieldy and unpunctual. With the speeding up of our passengen train timetables the necessity of keeping the trains within proportions that may be reasonably handled has become an absolute essential to a satisfactory service and I could not see the express train doing all the work that would be required of it, if it were made the only through passenger train daily, without grave dissatisfaction arising. Similarly, in the reverse direction, namely from Christchurch to Invercargill, by reason of the facts above mentioned —that the starting time from Christchurch cannot be altered—it would mean a later arrival in Invercargill, that is, about 10 p.m. instead of 9.5 p.m. as at present. Similar considerations to the earlier starting from Invercargill apply here also.. My conclusion is that the daily through train could not possibly be adopted on the present timetable without entirely eliminating the service now given by the mail trains to those stations at which those trains stop but at which the expresses do not stop. This inconvenience would, I am satisfied, be substantial and would give rise to well-founded complaint and would have an adverse effect on our passenger traffic for the reasons I have indicated above. Against -this would be the advantage sought to be gained by a daily mail service. Examining this advantage it seems to me to be considerably less than might at first appear. The Invercargill people have the equivalent of a through mail to the North Island on four days per week. The measure of advantage is therefore determined by the number of urgent letters which the Invercargill people would have to and from the north on Wednesdays and Fridays. In the northward direction even this would apply only to letters from Invercargill to the North Island, in that a letter posted in Invercargill on Wednesday or Friday in time for the “up” mail train leaving Invercargill at 1.45 p.m. would go by the night train from Dunedin and would be in Christchurch shortly after seven o’clock on Thursday or Saturday morning which, from a business point of view, is not radically different from arriving by a train the previous night. Similarly in the reverse direction a letter from Christchurch posted after the close of business on Tuesday and Thursday nights would leave by the 10.30 p.m. train the same night arriving at Dunedin the next morning. This would connect with the morning mail train which arrives at Invercargill at 1.10 p.m. This service, leaving as it does, , after the close of business on Tuesday and

Thursday nights, is practically equivalent to a through service leaving on Wednesday morning and is, if anything rather superior in that it lands the mail in Invercargill eight hours earlier than if the through train were run on Wednesdays and Iridays. Clearly, therefore, the question of the disadvantage reduces itself ultimately to those urgent letters from Invercargill to the North Island and from the North Island to Invercargill that would, in the former case, be on the ferry boat which leaves Lyttelton on Tuesday and Thursday nights, and in the latter case would require to catch the ferry boat from Wellington on Wednesday and Friday nights. This number of letters must surely be comparatively small. Moreover, with the high degree of convenience at a very cheap rate that is afforded by means of night letter telegrams, and the high state of efficiency to which the interisland telephone system has been brought, I think that even this measure of inconvenience is reduced to such proportions as confines itself to the transmission of urgent documents on those days. It is inevitable, on any' curtailment of train services, that some measure of inconvenience will have to be felt by’ various sections of the public. The best that can be done is to weigh up the measure of disadvantage fairly and impartially with a view to reducing it to the smallest proportions so far as the whole community is concerned. On such an impartial examination, I cannot help btit conclude that the case for the alteration desired by the Invercargill people cannot be supported. A suggestion was put forward that the Post and Telegraph Department be communicated with on the matter. Mr Mackrell suggested that omnibus proprietors should be approached to carry the mails to Dunedin on Wednesdays and Fridays. With another suggestion that the Post and Telegraph Department and the Railway Department should confer, the matter was referred to a sub-committee with power to act.