the 1950s, the railways have been run by a separate administrative and funding "silo" from the State Highways, and increasingly located outside the core land transport planning system as well. Thus, the New Zealand Transport Agency doesn't run rail in spite of its name, and neither did Transit New Zealand. This dates back to the late 1920s. In 1927 a Main Roads Fund was set up, financed by road taxes. In 1929 a Transport Department was set up which was separate from the Railways Department and which soon became its rival, since by default the Transport Department was focused on Roads. Labour abolished the Main Roads Fund in the 1940s but didn't abolish the Transport Deparment nor amalgamate rail with it. By the 1950s the Transport Department was arguing 'that the Railways Department be relieved of responsibility for running non-paying passenger trains, and that any necessary services be provided by private enterprise road services' (in Leitch & Stott NEW ZEALAND RAILWAYS: THE FIRST 125 YEARS, Heinemann 1988, p. 109). The National Party government which took power in 1949 was sympathetic to this 'user pays' discourse and set up a National Roads Board and road-tax funded National Roads Fund within the Transport Department, which basically allowed the Transport Department to build a huge system of State Highways next to the railway lines. Thus, in short, the State Highway system is a textbook example of a self-funding bureaucratic empire which survives to the extent that it can marginalise railways running in the