IS IT MOTOR CONTROL.

Waikato Times, Volume 102, Issue 17221, 3 October 1927, Page 6

IS IT MOTOR CONTROL.

Our Wellington correspondent, sends some interesting comment on the Premier's proposal for transport control, which moans, in effect, control of motor traffic. The Wellington Post expresses the fear that the proposed control, in checking waste, will check enterprise also. An authority with a very wide experience of railway affairs is quoted by our correspondent as .commenting to the following effect:— It was no use to say that because the railways had cost £60,000,000 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. Precisely the opposite view was expressed by the Prime Minister in

his statement in Parliament on the Railway Estimates on Saturday. He is reported as saying:—

If our railways continued to show losses and business fell off the country would sooner or later be faced with a difficult problem 'of making both ends meet. They must have, some means by which they could co-ordina'e the traffic so that this huge publicly-owned concern might give a full return for its cost to meet requirements. The Prime Minister is to be congratulated on facing the problem of the new transport, but is he placing first things first. Is it not possible that loss to the railways might mean gain to the country if the new transport is more economical than the old? In that case the "full return" that he asks for on the railways' cost would be obtained at the expense of a sacrifice of general progress and economy. The chief trouble at present is that there is no criterion by which to judge whether the motors are wasteful or economical in their operations, since no attempt has been made to charge to their account the cost of their use of the roads. Until this is done Government is necessarily working in the dark.