TRANSPORT CONTROL

Waikato Times, Volume 102, Issue 17221, 3 October 1927, Page 9

TRANSPORT CONTROL

WELLINGTON CRITICS. OF WIR COATES' SCHEIE. (Times Correspondent.) WELLINGTON, Saturday. The Evening Post is critical of the Prime Minister's scheme of transport control to save the railways from motor competition. "The method of adjusting competition by regulation," it says, "is one which we can heartily approve in theory, though doubtful concerning its practical application. Experience of the operation of the motor omnibus regulations shows that there is a grave danger of tin's method being applied to kill competition, rather than to regulate it. It may begin as a check upon transport waste and end as a prop for transport monopoly. For this reason we hope it will not be made the chief agent of adjustment, but will be used with extreme caution and after most careful investigation. Otherwise a check may be placed upon enterprise as well as upon waste." The danger of this sort of thing happening has been demonstrated in several of the large cities of the Dominion, where the motor-buses in a great measure have been driven off the streets, not by the superior service supplied by the municipal trams but by tlie process of Cabinet-made law. The adoption of a simitar policy on an unlimited scale would not be in the interests of the public. A Big Task. An authority of very wide experience in railway affairs, referring to the Minister's suggestions to-day, said he thought it quite time the Government; applied itself seriously to the reorganisation of the Dominion's great transport service. The present position was far too serious to be made the subject of a party wrangle, but the members on both sides of the House who had any light to throw upon the problem would not be restrained by any personal considerations. Of course, he went on to say, it was motor transport that had brought about most of the present trouble. Before the arrival of the motor the Minister in charge of the railways had a comparaliveiy easy job in making them show a profit on paper year after year. But his successors were placed in a very different position—particularly during the last three or four years-—and they would go from bad to worse unless they made up their minds to accept the'inevitable and co-operate frankly and intelligently with the motor. It was no use to say that because the railways had cost £00,000,000 or £70,000,000 they must pay current interest on that sum. The thing was impossible. The railways must be taken at their present worth and on that basis be made to yield a reasonable return in competition with their sturdy rivals.