TRANSPORT BOARD TAKES SHAPE

Sun (Auckland), Volume II, Issue 511, 14 November 1928, Page 8

TRANSPORT BOARD TAKES SHAPE

CANDIDATES for the Transport Board have already been nominated by three of the eight suburban local bodies. Their total representation will be no more than four members, so that if, as seems likely, each body nominates one candidate, there will be eight candidates for the four vacancies, and a strenuous eliminating process will be necessary when the nominees go to a ballot. A far better way, facilitated by the fact that the eight local bodies are divided into two groups, would be for the local bodies to confer unofficially before completing tlieir nominations. It is hopeless to expect the Transport Board to succeed if it is to be saddled from the start with the competitive petty jealousy of suspicious boards and boroughs. The City Council, which lias freedom to make a final selection of its six representatives at a special meeting to-morrow afternoon, is under no less a responsibility. As the dominating power on the board, the city's six representatives must be free of the overbearing notion that the city is the one and only consideration, the other local bodies being merely poor relations. The need for progressive and untrammelled minds upon the board has been emphatically stressed, and if these necessary talents can be leavened by practical experience of the transport problem, then so much the better. Though the Transport Act has been gazetted, the trams and buses are not yet the property of the Transport Board; but the City Council is only running them on the board's behalf. With a few more formalities the board will take its place as a potent force in civic affairs. Overshadowed at present by the national elections, the processes of its formation are yet a matter of vast importance. Such is their nature that the selection of administrators is something of a lucky dip. By May, 1931, the people will have actual performance in office to guide them.