The Sun SATURDAY, JULY 28, 1928 PIGS IN CLOVER

Sun (Auckland), Volume II, Issue 418, 28 July 1928, Page 8

The Sun SATURDAY, JULY 28, 1928 PIGS IN CLOVER

lI AS Auckland the form of a modern city and the mind' of a last-century village? The commission of experts who recently investigated Greater Auckland’s transport problem has thought so, and so has said with polite regret. In other words, transport equipment, methods, and standard of comfort belong to the 1925-1935 decade, but some of the municipal outlook and spirit belongs to the corresponding decade a hundred years ago. In that view of method and mood perhaps the commission has dug out the kernel of a hard-shelled nut. But many citizens will be tempted to challenge the commission’s span of time in its bridge of comparison; there have been occasions when the users of trams and buses have thought that methods and municipal outlook, best known, of course, as expensive muddle, have been nearer two centuries behind modern requirements and comfort. Strap-hanging at twopence for the first mile, or a series of jolts in a stuffy bus in return for a penal fare: these and the like are the experiences of- tolerant Aucklanders in this advanced decade of 1925 to 1935. Thus, in regret, rather than as a reproach, the Transport Commission, after consuming about £.5.000 in its task of listening patiently to a’long gale of village argument/recommends the creation of a Metropolitan Transport Board with possession of a complete monopoly of transport, excepting' trains, coloured taxicabs, and private motor-ears. The expert commission is not enamoured of its own recommendation, has no enthusiasm for it at all, but gives it sadly as the only practicable, reasonable expedient to overcome extravagant difficulties until the vainglorious members of local municipal bodies have discarded the village outlook of 1825, and are able to realise the civic needs of 1935. • The position is a greater comedy than ever. The commission played the old puzzle* game of pigs in clover with four different methods of control, spent a lot of time, thought and money on its efforts at putting them all into the tricky paddock, but could not succeed with complete satisfaction for themselves or for anybody else. It had to he content with getting one pig into clover by means of what has been called “the process of elimination,” but has confessed that the problem has not been solved. Nor is the problem likely to be solved for a long time to come, perhaps not until the 2005 to 2015 decade. Since the ideal —a in’ogressive metropolis, including all the present suburbs and pocket boroughs and road boards in the isthmus area, their village ideas submerged at last in perfect unity and inspired by a modern outlook—was not attainable, the commission decided to recommend, as the next best thing just now, the elimination of the' City Council as the controlling power over Greater Auckland transport. It has to be observed that the commission has not assailed the council for bad administration. That phase of the existing muddle has been left to inference or imagination. Indeed, with the exception of the grossly unjust and preposterous power that was given by a foolish State Administration to the City Council to act as the transport licensing authority, which injustice is condemned properly by the commission, the expert investigators appear to have been reasonably satisfied with the work of the council’s Tramways Committee. Satisfaction with the existing control has been sufficient enough at least to encourage the commission to recommend that the proposed Metropolitan Transport Board of ten members should include six representatives of the City Council. This looks very much like the old butter at the old price, hut done up attractively in a new wrapper with a distinctive title. And it is proposed that the chairman of the new hoard shall he given an honorarium of £250 a year, while the other members shall be remunerated at the rate of £1 10s a meeting, with a maximum of £7B a year. An absurd proposal; if a transport board be expected to do any good at all, the remuneration of the chief administrator should either he a great deal more, so that he could afford to devote most of his time to making trams and buses pay, or no remuneration at all. It is all very well to say that the ox that treadeth out the corn should be permitted to eat its share of grain, but why keep to the standard of oxen? Since there is no compulsion about the commission’s recommendations, all the local bodies concerned should give careful consideration to the whole question before rushing to Parliament for a legislative enactment. Meanwhile, let the Tramways Committee continue its better work in reducing the recent appalling losses on its ricketty buses.