MUST RAILWAYS AND MOTORS BE ALWAYS AT WAR?

Star (Christchurch), Issue 18012, 24 November 1926, Page 3

MUST RAILWAYS AND MOTORS BE ALWAYS AT WAR?

AMERICA IS TRYING SOME CO-OPERATION. The challenge to the railways by motor-car and bus transport has become so serious in the United States ! that the railroad companies have had I to take drastic steps to compete suc- ! cessfully. The American railways are run by private enterprise, and their methods of meeting competition from motors differ considerably from those adopted by the Australian State railway managements (says a Sydney paper). ; The first method of attack of the American companies has been through an appeal to the prospective traveller’s pocket and the establishing of -what are known as circle tours. A number of the railroads have found it advantageous to enter the bus field themselves. Others have concentrated on better train services and greater courtesy, and exhibit greater determination in going after possible passenger and freight business. Dealing with the fight the railroads are making against their road competitors, “ Printers’ Ink,” ail American advertising journal, says that the railroads of the United States have reached the conclusion that the automobile has bitten as deep as it must be allowed to bite into the passenger revenues of the trains. CAUTIOUS APPROACH. If the railroads were to assail motorears generally, they would assail one of the largest and most productive shippers. Last year the automobile industry gave the railroads 3,040,000 cars of freight, to handle. Three million carloads of freight are calculated to make all the railroads executives in the country to stop, look and listen. It is not surprising, therefore, that their approach to this problem has been conservative and Ccfutious. The railroad policy towards the automobile can be plainly stated. Here is a new industry which has been set up in comparatively recent years, and which is a splendid asset for the carriers from a freight standpoint. As to the comI petition of the child of that industry—- ' the bus and the motor truck—there is ample opportunity for co-ordination and no reason why they should compete. The railways are perfectly willing to allow the short haul—lor passengers or freight—to the others, but they would prefer when the field is left open for the buses that the trains be relieved of the operation of passenger trains. RATE CUT. Important rate redxxctions have been made, and the companies estimate that this year the public is receiving the lieneiit of voluntary reductions in passenger fares aggregating over £11,000,000 a } r ear. There arc | more excursion rates and limited trip 1 tickets available at present than since long before the war. Since 1921 re-' ductions have been made in the aver- ' age amount received by the railroads for carrying a passenger one mile resulting in a saving to the public of £28,072,000. One of the most important innovavations has been the circle tour. A circle tour, for example, is one which affords a passenger from Philadelphia or New York a trip to Buffalo and Niagara Falls, thence to Toronto, down Lake Ontario, and the St Lawrence River, to Montreal, and alternative routes home by way of Lake Champlain. Lake George and Saratoga, and the Hudson River trip, or a somewhat longer journey through the White Mountains to Portland or Boston, and thence to the starting point by rail or water. One ticket is sold for the wljole trip. RUNNING BUSES. A number of railroads have found it. advantageous to enter the bus field themselves. Others have found it more to their advantage to replace heavy steam trains with gasoline cars where traffic was . light, with results 1 so satisfactory that the manufacture of gasoline cars of various types for j railroads has become an important and steadily growing industry. The Reading and the Pennsylvania are two of the companies which have been hardest hit by automobile competition. The Reading has lost no time in fighting back. Its president,

Mx Agnew T. Dice, in a widely circulated letter distributed in a direct mail advertising campaign, has said: “The. public will have to decide whether it can afford to provide roadways and terminals for these bus highway lines, particularly those which seek to duplicate, and possibly replace, adequate rairoad services gradually developed over a long period.”