The Sun 42 WYNDHAM STREET, AUCKLAND FRIDAY, NOVEMBER 9, 1928 TRANSPORT ON THE RIGHT TRACK

Sun (Auckland), Volume II, Issue 507, 9 November 1928, Page 8

The Sun 42 WYNDHAM STREET, AUCKLAND FRIDAY, NOVEMBER 9, 1928 TRANSPORT ON THE RIGHT TRACK

AUCKLAND transport is now theoretically out of the City Council’s hands. The Act providing for the creation of a transport board has become operative. All that remains to be done is to finalise the selection and appointment of city and suburban representatives, and transfer the municipal tramway and bus business to the new and (as everybody will hope) better administration.

It can now be said that Auckland’s transport system is at last on the right track and headed for a reasonable profit. The actual results so far this year are really good and ever so much better than they have been since the advent of municipal panic and muddle over and about buses, while the prospects are such as to encourage responsible administrators to anticipate a substantial credit balance at the close of the financial year. This need not be taken as a reason for .regretting the significant change in administrative control. The position is not yet good enough to cause anyone to sigh for the return of the old, happy-go-lucky system of administration. On an official estimate, without specific details, the profits on trams will aggregate approximately £-59,000 for the year, while the loss on buses will not be much less than £50,000. Thus, a surplus of £9,000 is in sight—a prospective gain which, if confirmed, will entitle the council’s tramway committee and practical management to a welcome measure of praise. For once in a long time they will deserve more ha’pence than kicks. Of course, all the credit for lifting the transport system out of a monetary morass on to firmer financial ground is not due to the principal administrators. So there need not be a rush for increased salaries. The public has contributed largely to the improved position of the transport system. The people as a whole have paid and continue to pay exceptionally high fares with admirable patience, while many suburban residents have liad to suffer hard conditions on some of the bus routes. In fairness to the municipal administration, it should be said frankly that the City Council did not secure a full opportunity to put its policy in respect of bus services into complete operation, hut then, with equal frankness, it should be pointed out again that such opportunity was denied because the ratepayers had lost their former confidence in the old brigade 5f municipal administrators. And it must not he overlooked that users of the trams have had to be charged on a relatively high scale to provide £50,000 a year for the purpose of redeeming the chronic loss on rattle-trap buses. Now that the new Transport Board is in the process of establishment on a broader basis of representation and responsibility, the public may look forward to a period of brisk development in tramway service extension. Five or six districts, all noted for expansive residential progress, are much in need of trams, and already are able to support a profitable service. Extension to five of these areas would eliminate the present unsatisfactory and hopelessly unprofitable bus services. Given a strong hoard of alert members, under a competent chairman with a head for business on the rules of sound accountancy, all ready and willing to abandon the old drowsy village habits and outlook, and to move briskly and confidently with the forward movement of Greater Auckland, the ratepayers in the hoard’s area will not hesitate to authorise expenditure on essential extensions and ways to certain progress and profit.

"CHASING SHADOWS ”

IF scandals of the magnitude of the Sydney graft charges were expected from the civic waste inquiry, as hinted recklessly by those who engineered the investigation, the people who were breathlessly awaiting the sordid revelations must now he sadly disappointed. Beyond administering a mild rebuke to an official who was injudicious enough to run a quarry as a sideline to his duties with the City Council, and making the blushing admission that there has been a certain amount of inevitable waste, the report presented last night said nothing to suggest that the city management is riddled with corruption. The truth is that a less incompetent council would never have been open to the ridiculous suspicions that prompted this inquiry. While it was never hacked by a real popular clamour, the inquiry had at least the support of a genuine public interest. There was no general feeling of uneasiness, but there was a fear that here and there might lie an odd instance of carelessness. Councillor Murray himself was regrettably intemperate in some of his early charges, and this betrayed him into a difficult position as the inquiry wore on. The methods by which he prosecuted his investigations among the workmen cannot he cordially commended ; but if, in making liis preliminary inquiries through more orthodox channels, he was treated with the same scant courtesy as has at times been exhibited toward him in the Council Chamber, then there is at least a little to be said in defence of his methods.

Any business, private or public, proceeds on the assumption that its employees are honest men; and this assumption is generally well founded. To bring shadowy charges against men of known integrity was ridiculous from the outset. The “scandal” of the rusty old boiler left to rest its hoary frame in the leafy quiet of the Nihotupu Valley was another piece of nonsense. But it finds a parallel in some of the nonsensical vacillations and changes of policy on the part of the present City Council; and that is why the whole sorry fiasco had to be treated with respect. The officers and staff of the council were the victims of their environment.