D.—2a.

Probable Traffic for Railway. It may be inferred, from what has been said as to the quality of the land on the routes proposed for the railway, that the traffic expected to be realized by the construction of a railway will be mostly terminal. Estimates of traffic on this basis were submitted to the Commission, calculated by the Railway Leagues of Canterbury and Westland; but we had some difficulty in deciding how much reliance could be placed on any estimates of traffic on the proposed railway, partly from the fact that they are based on an increased traffic and population expected to be created by the construction of the railway, and partly from the uncertainty of the effect of the competition by sea-carriage. Nevertheless, judging from the effects produced elsewhere by the opening-up of railway communication, some large increase over the present trade may be fairly expected to result from the facilities afforded by the railway; and, although the traffic thus anticipated may not at first be large, yet the growth of population and production is so rapid in New Zealand that the traffic may, without exaggeration, be estimated to double itself within the next ten years. If the harbours on the West Coast were very good, the prospects for the railway would be still more uncertain; but the harbours are as bad as they can well be, and it is doubtful whether they can be made even tolerably good without a very large expenditure. Therefore, as concerns the traffic of the West Coast with the East Coast, the construction of a railway offers a much more certain result for the expenditure required, although it tends to restrict the traffic to any other places except the East Coast, unless the harbours are improved also. The variety of products produced respectively on the opposite sides of the Island indicates the East Coast as the best market for the interchange of products with the West, and it must resolve itself into a question of convenience and expense, whether the carriage of such products should be by land or sea. For safety, convenience, and despatch, the advantage is of course with land carriage, and these are sure to have an effect on the prices of carriage in one form or another. With the harbours in their present condition it would be difficult to carry on a very large traffic. It may be claimed for a railway that not only does it perform the traffic between the extremities east and west, but it assists to open communication all along its route, which a sea traffic cannot do, and that it is therefore of so much more value, as a tract of country is useless without communication. It has been shown that the East and West Coast Railway would have mostly a terminal traffic ; therefore it would only afford this advantage to a limited extent: still, it offers these advantages in the present and future to the district it traverses, and it is difficult to say what requirements may arise even in the mountainous tracts through which it is proposed to carry the line. Sea-carriage offers no such advantages, and in addition there are sea losses which may be represented by insurance charged, which, for a traffic worth, say, £500,000, would amount to about ,£6,000 yearly. The sea freights must not be taken to represent all the cost of carriage; thus on coal brought from Brunnerton to Lyttelton there are various charges incurred, in addition to the sea freight, amounting to 9s. per ton; on timber there are similar charges, to the amount of Is. 2d. per 100 feet. Consequently, it will be seen that, if the railway is able to carry produce at a less cost than at present by sea, it will either lower the cost to the entire community or attract to itself all the trade. If haulage by railway and sea freights were exactly equal, the saving would be 9s. per ton on all coal brought by the railway, represented by savings on various charges connected with the sea traffic, and the community would either get the benefit of this, or the railway would secure all the coal traffic of the district. In the same way there would be a saving of sundry charges on timber to the amount of Is. 2d. per 100 feet, which would affect all the timber of the same quality used in Canterbury, or give the railway the advantage to the same amount. These savings would be at the expense of £16,770 at present earned by the Lyttelton and Christchurch line, and £4,350 by the Harbour Board as wharfage. The railway would also greatly increase the amount of passenger traffic, and facilitate settlement all along its line. It would also materially reduce the cost of the railways to the Government in furnishing a large supply of sleepers at a low cost. The want of sleepers is beginning to be already felt, and in the next five or years the difficulty will increase to meet the demand of 400,000 sleepers yearly required to renew the New Zealand lines. Routes. As generally happens on proposed lines of railway, the question of the best route has given rise to much difference of opinion, differences arising not only on the merits of the

Terminal traffic.

Effects of railway communication.

Advantages of railway- over sea-carriage.

lowering of prices by railway.

Sleepers.

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