Other formats

    TEI XML file   ePub eBook file  

Connect

    mail icontwitter iconBlogspot iconrss icon

The New Zealand Railways Magazine, Volume 6, Issue 3 (August 1, 1931)

The Present Railway Position

The Present Railway Position.

The present depressed state of business has required far-reaching changes in methods and outlook throughout the whole transport world. In our own railway system, which (besides being of Dominion moment on the financial side) is an integral part of national life, much re-organisation and adjustment has been required to deal with the new conditions.

Some of these changes have necessarily been of an experimental character, and owing to other conditions being abnormal, it is difficult to decide on the evidence available from returns, etc., whether such alterations are in themselves the best possible in the circumstances.

While I expect, as in the past, that the staff shall give loyal support to decisions made upon such matters as rates, train services, and the general conditions laid down for the transport of passengers and commodities, and will do their best to make the public understand, be satisfied, and if possible, be pleased with the standard of service rendered, it is far from desirable that members, through an excess of loyalty, should be self-hypnotised into a belief that whatever decision may be given must necessarily be right, or—like the laws of the Medes and Persians—unalterable. The “man on the spot” has chances to judge of the effect of changes produced by decisions of the Department, by activities of competitors, or by any other of the constantly changing factors in the equation of transport as they affect his particular locality that are denied to the central organisation which is only placed to judge of broad effects.