EAST COAST RAILWAY.

Gisborne Times, Volume XXV, Issue 2078, 13 May 1907, Page 4

EAST COAST RAILWAY.

The New Zealand Herald makes tho following editorial remarks re the East Coast railway :—Our members of Parliament will have to bestir themselves if tlie development of tho North Island and of the great province of Auckland is not still to bo hampered by the short-sightedness of the Government in railway construcmatters. Mr. Millar, who comes from Otago, told an East Coast deputation at Tauranga yesterday that lines now in hand should be completed to a paying point before any others were commenced. This is plausible enough, but not necessarily sound in any case. Least of all is it sound when we know that the “unfinished lines” are practically all in the South Island, and that' in tlie North such lines as the East Coast have no official existence. Since it became impossible to longer delay the •completion ot the Main Trunk, which, although a “national” line, has been most unfairly constructed out of our North Island “share” of the railway allocations, there has been a move on foot, to concentrate railway expenditure as much as possible in the favored South Island. Sir Joseph Ward lias advocated it, and Mr. Millar simply follows his loader. 'J'lie North is to wait while the Midland, the Otago Central, a dozen other Sdiith'em constructions absorb the public funds available. Afterwards—well, we shall see. Ajiart from the general injustice of the proposition, which is but a prolongation of the method by which the South has obtained almost double the railway mileage of the North, it is most impolitic to delay those Auckland railway projects which have for their purpose tho opening up of the back blocks. Tho Minister for Lands has. been telling us that the great development of the future must be in tho North Island and largely in Auckland Province, yet there is no disposition on the part of the Government to make proper provision for that development, in all wellmanaged businesses managers look ahead and prepare carefully for the expansions they confidently foresee us inevitable in the immediate future. , Hut in the management of : our railway business there is no such foresight, neither in the providing of rolling plant nor in the making of railways. In tho province of Auckland tho railways are generally far behind settlement; and on tho East Coast, where great blocks of fertilo land are awaiting settlement, it is impossible to profitably dovelop the country until a railway is at. least in view. Whatever else is done, railways should be pushed into country where they will assist great settlement and do a profitable business; there is no district in the colony with better claims on these just grounds than the East Coast.