THE TRAMWAY PROBLEM.

Wanganui Chronicle, Volume LXXVI, Issue 18021, 9 November 1920, Page 4

THE TRAMWAY PROBLEM.

Whether or nor it may result in any practical benefit to the community, the largely-attended meeting of citizens held last evening served at least as a vent for some ot the irritation caused by the prolonged dislocation of the tramway service. The conveners and their supporters on the platform successfully voiced the feeling of the public, but it cannot be said that they presented any new facts or threw any fresh or helpful light on the gloomy situation. It remained for Cr. Donaldson to give the meeting its really serious aspect, for it was he who definitely and specifically challenged the efficiency of the Council’s (responsible expert, the Manager and Engineer. He publicly declared that a change of personnel so far as that important position is concerned affords the only means ot finding a satisfactory solution of the tramway problem. It is a serious indictment, and in fairness to the officer concerned it must either be proved or disproved. This, we fear, cannot be done by the mere muck-raking of all the administrative details and technicalities of the past few years. The public generally know very little about kilowats, units, amperes, voltage, alternating and direct currents, etc., but they do know, to their cost, that the tramway service has been seriously out of gear for a long time past. They have been told that this is the inevitable outcome of the disabling conditions occasioned by the war, and that in the circumstances all that could have been done has been done and done, too, as effectively and economically as was possible. This, then, it seems to us, is the simple and crucial fact by which Cr. Donaldson’s indictment of the Manager and Engineer must be tested. And it ought to be possible to test it, and to test it ..effectively, without the cumbersome machinery of an expensive and time-wasting Commission, without calling for a mass of expert evidence, without even the necessity of answering the forty odd questions propounded by one of the conveners of last night’s meeting. The position is simply this: the present condition of the service was foreseen, and an order for the plant necessary to obviate a breakdown, duly authorised by the Council, was subsequently cancelled because the contractor was unable to carry it out, owing to the outbreak of the war. All that remains to be ascertained is whether, in view of this untoward emergency, the Council’s expert did all that he could be reasonably expected to do towards meeting the unfortunate predicament with which he was faced? In brief, the public know what has been done to meet the emergency, and what it has cost to do it. Could this, or better, have been done more quickly and at less cost? If not, then the Engineer, instead of being held blameworthy, must be credited with having done the best possible under adverse circumstances.