CAR CHALLENGES THE RAILWAYS.

Star (Christchurch), Issue 18959, 4 January 1930, Page 28 (Supplement)

CAR CHALLENGES THE RAILWAYS.

SERVICE MUST FACE NEW CONDITIONS. (Written for the “ Star ” by E. J. HOWARD, M.P.) Two girls bought a second-hand motor-car and started off for the round trip, Kaikoura, Blenheim, Nelson, Westport, Greymouth and home. They packed in the back of the car food, clothing, blankets and cooking utensils. Writing from Blenheim they said, “ All going well, there are millions of cars on the road.” Allowing for a little poetic license those girls meant that there w’ere many cars doing the trip, or at least on the road to Nelson. There was no hurry or bustle or trouble in getting away, no rushing to catch trams, no worry about getting a seat in the train; they just slipped away as it were. One cannot help contrasting that with the trouble of a train journey, and the car is bound to beat our train service unless those in charge of the railways get a broader vision of what is required. Why, when tickets are purchased could passengers not have a seat guaranteed with their number on it. Why should they have to get another ticket if they want to be sure of securing a seat? There are thousands of people who want to go for a trip to Timaru for a day, or to Ashburton, or even further if the railways would abolish the little worries. Take our ferry train service. Watch the scramble every morning to get seats. Tickets are bought on the ship. Those tickets could and should carry a numbered seat. There should be a special officer detailed to see the people into the train and to supply information. The railways belong to the people in theory and should be run for the convenience of the people. It must be done if we want to induce traffic. This is not a grouch, but a genuine desire to assist the vision. Tunnel Road. Looking 1930 full in the face we in the city of Christchurch can do things before we write 1931 on our records. The first thing is the tunnel road inquiry. That is coming, although why we should have engineers to inquire into it I cannot understand. It is certainly an engineer’s job to bore the tunnel, if we decide to have the job done. From an engineering point of view there is nothing in it. If we decide to have it done and say to our Public Works Department, “ Do it,” it would be done, and if we did not handicap them by making it a relief ■works job they could tell us to the day when it would be done. There is nothing too big for the engineers of this country if w- decide we want the job done. If we wanted a tunnel under Cook Strait our engineers would tackle the job and get it done. As a fact on the Rand in South Africa, they have bored tunnels that if placed end to end would reach from the North Cape to the Bluff three times, or from Cape Town to Khartoum. And they are boring to-day at the rate of fourteen miles per month. They are doing this mostly for what is termed development purposes, because this boring does not include the actual stoping or excavations on the reef. They are down over a mile and a quarter and still sinking. Of course they are after the precious metal, and if that petered out all these underground borings would be closed and in a few thousand years would be objects of wonderment to those who will be li ing then; apparently wondering why the people of these times placed so much value on a useless metal.

So then the inquiry into the question of whether there should be another tunnel bored through the hills to Lj’ttelton or not is to be referred to a committee of engineers. Personally, I wotild refer it to a few men like Dr Hight for instance, who should examine it from an economic point of view True we would want the engineer to tell us the probable cost, but as a job it is only a flea-bite compared to the boring of the original tunnel when we think of our up-to-date machinery. Demand for Access. As a fact, then, this proposed tunnel is the challenge of the motor vehicle to the railway. It is the demand being made by the benzine buses for better roads and freer access. Just about sixty years ago man discovered a new force in what he termed ‘gasolene’’. Although the oil from which gasolene is extracted had been known and used f<?r other purposes for hundreds of years, it was not until the Americans discovered this black, sticky stuff that it was used for fuel, or, at least, as gas fuel. England grew great on her coal measures. But coal requires miners to go down and dig it out and send it to the surface. Then as the men went deeper and deeper to get the coal it became an economic problem. The average contents of a ton of dirt on the Rand is fourteen pennyweights. It does not take much

of an economist say that when it costs fifteen pennyweights to recover the gold in the ore, the mines will be abandoned. So it is with coal. The oil is challenging the coal from almost every point of view. The heating power of coal is less, the bulk is greater. You have to go down am' pick the coal from the earth, the oil will blow your pump out to get out From this nasty, sticky stuff that the ancients used to ilse to cure the sores on the backs .of the camels, we extract hundreds of useful things. Probably there is not a home in this large city to-day that one could not find some part of this oil. There’s vaseline, kerosene, paraffin and a hundred and one other things. Go down into what used to be termed the stokehold of our ferry boats and we find in place of a load of coal banked almost up to the furnace doors, when they leave port, and instead of sweating, toiling, moiling men, shovelling coal into a hungry, roaring furnace, someone just turns a tap, and a spray of what the, Americans call crude oil is sent in on a flame and away she goes. Chemist’s Discovery. For years uncomplaining horses dragged our traffic over indifferent roads and tracks, and no one ever suggested that it was unfair to the horses. But this American in Pennsylvania found this black, sticky stuff in his backyard. The chemist discovered that he could extract a dozen different things from this sticky stuff and then he had left a dangerous combination of oxygen and hydrogen that would blow the top of his retort off, light at a distance of fifteen feet away from the i escape hole, and do other things. He ran it off into sumps and got rid of j it as soon as possible. He was- slightly i afraid of it. Then an engineer said: ‘‘lf we can explode this in the head of a cylinder we can make the wheels go round.” And he did the job. So in New Zealand, then, every potato that is grown, every ear of corn, every cabbage is paying tribute in some form of taxation to this new force called petrol, which is short for petroleum. Concrete roads are creeping out all over the country because this gasolene bus is demanding it. And we are -to investigate another hole through' the hills to let this bus through. Man is a wheeling animal. He wants wheels for everything. He used to use windmills to turn his wheels. Then he used coal, now he uses gasolene. He used to develop great tanks full of a gas he called steam. He had to cart this i

tank about v i*V. him and keep making and irakin;.' rids ‘tenrn gas and keep it *ot such a pressure that sometimes the rivet* blew out and his tank burst. N«»\v he bu«s it in a tin in the form of a cold liquid and turns it into a as required. And there are 200.000 of these machines in New Zealand in shape- of motor- trucks, motor-cars, moto-omnibuses. motor-cycles, . and odds and ends that are using this gas. Every bijs introduced into this countrv is causing an increase in the upkeep of roads. Since 1924 the increased cost of maintaining our highways has risen by £5 to £6 per annum for each motor-vehicle imported; while this* vehicle only contributes approximately £u per annum. The New Power. We cannot dodge it; every day sees a growing list of deaths and hurts from this cause, but every day sees a growing number of cars and cycles on our roads. The railways can go on with their thousands of regulations and red tape measures, but as sure as steam displaced the sailing-ship and the motor-ship is displacing steam, our rail wavs will have to adopt the new power or get out. The increased cost doesn’t frighten the people. The people borrowed and spent £60,000,000 in sixty years. They spent £60,000.000 in sixteen years in this new form of locomotive. Trains offer locomotion at one penny per mile; motor-cars at sixpence to a shilling; the people use the motor-car in preference. The railways are not done if they will adapt themselves to the new conditions. We have got to make our railways as comfortable and as convenient as the motor-cars and it can be. done if we have the vision and the will to do the job. Have we?