SERVICE NEEDED ON N.Z. RAILWAYS.

Star (Christchurch), Issue 19060, 3 May 1930, Page 25 (Supplement)

SERVICE NEEDED ON N.Z. RAILWAYS.

A SOCIAL QUESTION FOR CONSIDERATION. (Written for the “ Star ” by E. J. Howard, M.P.). If you want to feel lonely, land in one of our main cities on a Sunday morning. You know that everybody is having half an hour longer in bed, that ,the trams are laid up in their barns and that there are no newspapers, and altogether there is a feeling that it is the resurreption morn, but only a few have answered the trumpet call, and the few melt away into space and are gone. New Zealanders are a travelling community; they have the travel spirit, but as individuals rather than co-opera-tively. Take a stranger landing at Lyttelton! There is not the slightest information to be obtained there. He tips a steward to take his bags to the train, and he obtains a seat. Even in the carriages there is no information. He just sits still and waits. Certainly the guard or ticket collector sometimes tells you That refreshments are obtainable at Christchurch Railway Station. A Friendly Tone. Let us turn to South Africa for a moment. We are travellers and have arrived at some station. It doesn’t matter what station or where we are going, or why the train stopped. We get out to stretch our legs, and we find a large, dominating sign “This is Vereeniging. It is 4715 feet above the level of the sea and forty-five miles from Johannesburg and sixty from Pary’s.” That is the nearest town of any size either way. There is a feeling of friendliness about that sign. There is a kind of “ welcome, old man, we’re glad you have come. This isn’t much of a town, but if you care to look around you are welcome.” Then you go to the bookstall and you get presented to you a small booklet, or you can buy a larger one telling you all about the town —that it is situated on the Transvaal side of the Vaal River. They tell you the meaning of the word, that it is a Dutch word meaning Union, and that the name was chosen because the peace treaty between Boer and Briton was arranged here. They tell you how much they pay in municipal taxation, not in a blatant way, but in a kind of “ Well, old man, we are doing all we can; don’t find fault with us.” Then they tell you about their sports and invite you to come along; their hotels and how much you can stay in them for, and they do it in such a way that you feel a kind of “ Well, they are only charging mte because they can’t actually afford to put me up for nothing.” Cold Travellers. We in New Zealand are cold travellers. There is a kind of “ take it or leave it.” In the towns or cities, unless you have a handle to your name, the welcome you get is “ Don’t spit on the footpath ” —as if you wanted to. Of course, we don’t mean it. We are as warm-hearted as any people in the world, but we are shy customers. We are really too modest. We don’t like to shout our goods. There is no use in travelling if you don’t learn anything. If you don’t broaden your mind. You can go to Caroline Bay and sit on the beach, but where is the difference between that beach and Brighton beach? It is the same kind of water, the same kind of sand and the same old salty smell. But we are visiting our neighbours. We are getting on friendly terms. We want to show them our babies and look at theirs. And then we return contented anc| much more contented because we find our neighbours are just haying the same old struggle we are having, and that we are much of a muchness. “Too Much Railway.” The trouble with our railway service i 3 that there is too much railway and too little service in the system. The same thing applies to our ferry service, so that it cannot be because the railwavs are State-owned. Go into the Union Steam Ship Company’s office and ask what time the train leaves for the West Coast. The young gentleman there will probably tell you to take number seven car. It is not his business to give railway information, but why not? He is part of the transport system. Go to the railway booking office and ask how much it costs for a two-berth cabin in a ship going to Australia 1 Ye gods and little fishes! You would have to duck your head quickly to miss the inkpot. But why shouldn’t the information be there? They are also part of a transport system. What is the difference between a boarding house and a home? Well, it is just that difference between our railways and our motor service, just those little personal and homely touches that are absent in our railway service. We, “the people of New Zealand”, sounds fine. We, the people of New Zealand, own the railways. Up to now we haven’t been able to afford to say all right, we all own them on a co-opera-tive basis, but we own them and we agree to sell, to those requiring it, service called transport. We have, other competitors in the market trying to sell transport, so we must compete. From the smallest boy in the service to the admiral who wears the gold braid and frock coat, there must be a feeling of service. England’s Example. There are iT .000.000.000 invested in railways in four main lines in England. They sell 1,300,000,000 tickets to that number of people annually. They own eighty-three hotels and they served 7,500,000,000 meals in their cars last year. The London and North Eastern Railway carry a million . passengers every day. “Of course, it is easy and economical to handle traffic when you have the traffic,” my pessimistic friend will say; but it is more than probable that 50 per cent of the passengers quoted above was induced traffic. The railway companies of England set out to make you want to travel. They env plov artists to paint the delights of travel. In a city bookseller’s recently there was displayed, a series of railway posters that were really pictures. They made you want to travel. They didn t make you feel that you would like to go to Llandudno instead of Blackpool; you just wanted to go to both places. There is a certain shipping company that had a block made of a steamship forty years ago. That company owns the most up-to-date motor ships on the seas to-day, but they still use the same old block’of a picture. The Old Station. Our old railway station at Christ- j church would kill any desire to travel. It conveys to the timid the feeling that ( there is great danger in railway travel- 1 ling. Psychologically it is a freak. “Stand back! Stand back!” yell the porters as the train rushes in at the tremendous speed of two miles per hour. The train is on the rails and can’t possibly jump up on to the platform and chase you; but mothers grab their children and fathers grab their wives, and everyone tries to push back. But we have done that for years and apparently enjoyed it. We could have a new railway station for this city if all the people wanted one. We get the things we* want if we really want them.

Our railways in New Zealand are not done yet. They are there for at least another fifty years. It would be dangerous to say what form of transport will take its place after that, but we don’t open our paper and find a column headed “Week-end railway accidents,” though it is becoming a feature with motor accidents. To Set Wheels Buzzing. A good live policy could set the wheels buzzing around on our railways, but someone will have to be courtmartialled before we wake up. Big ships must not be delayed in our ports because they cannot get trucks to take thei£ cargoes to or from the port. If we can’t build trucks we must build stores on the wharves. Passengers must not be turned away because there is no accommodation. Roughly, we have 15,000 people who go away from New Zealand annually on trips. Hundreds of those people have never seen New Zealand. They take away an awful amount of money to spend in other countries. We must induce them to see New Zealand first. We must make them want to see New Zealand. We must make them want to go by train where possible. We have transport to sell. The same as bootshops get boots and gramophone shops get gramophones to sell. With Comfort. We have transport to sell, and must say it with flowers and chocolates and books and comfort. We have transport to beautiful places to sell. Nowhere else in the world is there anything to compare with New Zealand. But the transport we have to sell must be spelt “comfort” for the traveller. He must press the button and we must do the rest. This is not a railway question for railwaymen only. It is a social question for every grown-up in New Zealand.