A CONTRADICTORY POLICY

Sun (Auckland), Volume III, Issue 675, 29 May 1929, Page 10

A CONTRADICTORY POLICY

A WEAK reply has been made by the Prime Minister to expert criticism of the Government’s contradictory policy in regard to railway construction. Several days ago, Mr. F. J. Jones, formerly chairman of the Railways Department’s Board of Management, not only condemned the decision of the Ward Administration to construct the Nelson-Inangaliua line and complete the interrupted Main Trunk railway through the South Island, but declared bluntly that it would be cheaper to subsidise motor transport to carry goods at railway rates than to pay the losses on these projected lines.

So far, Sir Joseph Ward’s answer is anything but a convincing argument in support of the Government’s policy. He assumes that Mr. Jones argued that “we ought not to have any railways in the country at all.” That is nothing better than a silly assumption, for Mr. Jones did not argue anything of the kind. He merely demonstrated with perfect fairness that time had wrought many changes in railway construction and national transport; that, in short, “the evolution of the motor vehicle has caused a revolution in transport methods and has greatly enhanced the costs of railway w’orking.” Thirty years ago, when road transport competition with railways was by means of drays and lumbering lorries, the capital cost of the railways'was under £ 8,000 a mile, while today the construction cost of railways averages not less than £.32,000 a mile, and the motor vehicle has become a quick and popular competitor. The Government has stopped and abandoned two railway projects in the North Island on the plea that such enterprises would not pay. It purposes constructing two lines in the South Island on the argument that, if they should fail to pay interest on their capital cost, it must be recognised that “ a railway is not taken absolutely on its face value.” _ Settlement has to be considered and. as Sir Joseph Ward has naively observed about the projected Main Trunk line from Blenheim to its break at Parnassus, there are scenic attractions. The Reform Government depended on the promise of settlement in the Taupo district, but did not urge the prospect of scenery. The question that overburdened taxpayers want answered deals with the pertinent point whether it is the politicians who are stopping railway construction in one place and beginning new railways somewhere else, or whether the policy lias been determined by the experts. Hitherto, the public has been kept in the dark. It is the right of the taxpayers to know exactly what authority is responsible either for wisdom or nonsense.