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Scottish Municipalith Plan for the Future

11th August 1950, Page 38
11th August 1950
Page 38
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Page 38, 11th August 1950 — Scottish Municipalith Plan for the Future
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Which of the following most accurately describes the problem?

M.Inst.1

FINANCIAL difficulties, uncertainty about the future and a desire to maintain long-established traditions of good service at amazingly low fares face the general managers of three Scottish municipal transport undertakings whom I recently visited. The tradition still exists, and whilst one can no longer travel 21 miles in Glasgow for 2d., the maximum tram fare is still only 4d., giving a journey of up to about 14 miles, and the highest bus fare only 5d., with a maximum ride of some 12 miles. The other systems have shorter routes but are nearly as generous.

In Glasgow, consideration of the future is complicated by the existence 31: a committee of inquiry set up by the British Transport Commission under Sir Robert Inglis to survey the transport needs of the area round the city. It is, therefore, uncertain whether or not the imaginative scheme put forward last year by Mr. E. R. L. Fitzpayne, general manager of the corporation transport department, will be adopted.

There is a strong feeling in Glasgow and, in fact, in (Right) Approach Scotland generally, that electric traction should be ing Princes Street,

retained in some form, in preference to increasing dollar Edinburgh, from

the Mound, is a

expenditure on oil. It is true that some municipal buses Corporation Bed

in Scotland are running on locally produced shale oil, ford single-decker.

but supplies of this are limited. Trams, which have Electrifying Plan Glasgow has an unusual number of suburban railway !ines, several of them circular, the product of past cornnetition. It occurred to Mr. Fitzpayne that a plan for electrifying certain of these lines and linking them up Kith the extensive road scheme prepared by the City Surveyor—the 50-year plan—would be a practical means for relieving the growing congestion of the streets. He, therefore, evolved a scheme, to which some publicity has already been given, for running a system of two-car trains over a network composed partly of electrified steam lines and partly of the existing reserved-track

tramways in the suburbs. •

These basic rail services would be fed and supplemented by buses, but the report did not specify whether motorbuses or trolleybusesshould be used. Glasgow has used motorbuses for many years, but has only recently begun to experiment with trolleybuses. •

It wai decided to withdraw trams from the difficult Provanmill-Polmadie route and to extend it at both ends to serve new housing developments. The service passes along High Street and over Glasgow Bridge, both extremely congested thoroughfares. It crosses four other busy routes although it has the advantage that there is only on'e short section in common with any other tram route. The number of crossings is important and is a point I did not appreciate until officials of the corporation explained it to me.

Because of the presence of both positive and negative conductors, it is necessary to have a dead section, where a trolleybus route crosses another trolleybus route or a •tram route with overhead wires. All Glasgow trams are fitted with wide bow collectors and this necessitates a stretch of dead section at crossings—as much as 9 ft. in some instances. Trolleybuses have to coast across:these gaps and it would be easy for the traffic to cause a driver to pull up smartly and so strand his vehicle

To deal with such an emergency, the Glasgow trolleybuses are fitted with batteries which can quickly be brought into action by the driver without leaving his

seat.

Under tram operation, the effect of the congestion was to bring the average speed of the route below that of the whole system (8.654 m.p.h. against 9,247), yet the trolleybuses have been successfully working since April 3. 1949, at an average speed of 9.679 m.p.h. The vehicles employed have M.C.W. 70-seater bodies and can carry 10 standing passengers. One hundred and fifty of the Corporation's eight-wheel bogie trams seat only 65, and there are 63 others (many with longitudinal seats downstairs) seating from 67 to 72. Most of the Glasgow trams arc four-wheelers seating 59.

The trolleybuses use more current than the trams, and the first few months' working seemed to indicate much higher working costs although. at the same time, revenue per mile was nigher. For the eight months ended January 31, 1950, however, working costs showed a much better figure of 18.64d. per mile, against revenue of 24.96d For the same period, the trams were working on the slender margin of 22.29d. (expenses) to 22.38d. (receipts).

The Corporation has 64 trolleybuses, although only 40 are in service at present. All are six-wheeled and are 8 ft. wide, and they comprise 32 B.U.T. chassis with English Electric equipment, two B.U.T. with Crompton Parkinson equipment and 30 Daimler with MetropolitanVickers equipment.

The main through service from Riddrie to Hampden Park, the journey time for which is 33 minutes, is supplemented by short routes from Riddrie to Polmadie (26 minutes). There is a separate service from Cathedral Street to Shawfield, Ruthergien Road (13 minutes). Headways are as follows: Riddrie to Hampden Park, 8 minutes during peak hours, 15 during stack; Riddrie to Polmadie, 4 minutes during peak hours, with extras as required, and 10 minutes during off-peak times. On the Cathedral Street-to-Shawfieid route, the headways are 2-it minutes during peaks, plus extras as required, and 6 minutes in slack periods.

The successful operation of this experimental route seemed to indicate the feasibility of using trolleybuses as feeders to the proposed light railways, whilst even if the scheme does not materialize, they constitute a serious, but not necessarily fatal, threat to the continued existence of the tramways. It is now proposed to institute trolleybus working over existing tram tracks from Milngavie to Cathcart via Victoria Bridge, about 12i miles.

• Corporation officials are toying with the Continental idea of handling rush-hour traffic by employing singledeckers with a large capacity for standing passengers. Now that four-wheelers can be built to a length of 30 ft., plans have been prepared for a vehicle with seats for 26 and a platform for 40 standing passengers. The conductor will be seated and passengers will enter at the rear and leave at the front. The resistances will be mounted above the driver's cab and under the dome of the roof, so that the roof line is unbroken.

Additional Incentive

Glasgow is particularly fortunate in having been allowed to keep its own generating station, and in being authorized to spend £2,000,000 in extensions. As a result, its cost for traction current, including generation and distribution, is only about .75d. per unit, as compared with 1.08d paid by Birmingham to the British Electricity Authority This, of course, is an additional incentive to use electric vehicles.

Another advantage Glasgow possesses is the statutory power to build its own bus bodies. Since the recent acquisition of these powers 16 bodies have been built on Daimler two-axle chassis to make a 33-seater bus with front entrance and rear exit.

B6 It must not be inferred from all this that trams are likely to disappear altogether from the Glasgow streets within the next few years. Even to change over the Milngavie-Clarkston route will take about two years.

It is true that tram street mileage has declined slightly in the past 10 years, but there are still 1,173 cars compared with 677 motorbuses and 64 trolleybuses. At the end of the war, plans were made for the building of 100 new bogie cars in the corporation workshops and this programme is being carried out as fast as materials and labour allow. The new cars, however, are intended to replace obsolete four-wheelers, and it can be accepted that the net total of tramcars is not likely to increase.

If the light railway scheme be not adopted, it does not follow that there will be a wholesale scrapping of trams. In London, the issue has been more clear-cut in that all the West End and much of the central area has never been served by trams. Birmingham, too, is different as it has never had cross-town trams in the electric era except for one or two brief experiments. The position in Glasgow is that practically all the main streets east to west and north to south, in the centre carry trams. These streets, too, rise out of the city centre, some very steeply.

Trolleybuses Slower

Trolleybuses are definitely slower than trams over crossings and junctions and if all the tram routes were replaced by trolleybuses it is doubtful if the increased average speed obtained on the first conversion could be maintained. The Milngavie-Clarkston experiment will show whether the slower speed of the trolleybus over the inner-city crossings can be more than made up on the outskirts. To substitute the trams completely by motorbuses in Glasgow would also present some difficulties.

Here I might mention a case cited to me by the traffic superintendent of a municipal undertaking in England. His corporation took off a tram service 4 miles long, which was on a rising gradient out of the town most of the way. The service was worked on the principle of one through car, then one to a point about 3 miles out, then one to about 2 miles out and then another through and so on.

When substituting the motorbuses they reduced the scheduled journey time considerably, but the first day or two of bus working showed that the buses could not keep up the tram speed on the first two miles, were just about level between the second and third, and showed a slight saving of time on the overall journey. There is a danger that the complete substitution of motorbuses for trams in central Glasgow might still further slow down movement and so add to the congestion.

Another point that occurs to me is that motorbuses seating more than 56 are not now very popular partly because of the delays in loading and unloading and partly because of the difficulty of collecting all the fares. With the high acceleration and overall speed of the Glasgow trolleybuses I shall be very surprised if there are not a_ great many missed fares. All the points I have mentioned are having to be weighed up against the high and increasing costs of permanent way and new vehicles which are making it so difficult to operate trams profitably.

Edinburgh transport department will exhaust its reserves during 1951, although there will still be 20 buses in service which are 12 or more years old. In 1952, the first electric trams, purchased when the conversion from cable cars took place. will be nominally 30 years old. I say nominally, because in fact they will have been practically rebuilt twice during that period. Nevertheless much of the tramcar fleet will be obsolete and doe for scrapping. Within the next year or so. therefore, some definite plan will have to be worked out for the future of the undertaking.

As a city, Edinburgh is fortunate in having wideflung boundaries and no contiguous towns, except on the east, where it touches M usselburgh. The authorities aim at keeping the population at about the present level, so that the problem is not complicated by a need to consider housing developments to the same extent as at Glasgow.

if, in future, coal be mined extensively in East Scotland instead of in Lanarkshire, as seems likely, the increased population will be housed in new towns well away from the present Edinburgh boundaries. Nevertheless. traffic in the city is growing. In 1947, for instance, the buses carried an average of 10.69 passengers per mile compared with 7.94 in 1939. whilst the trams carried 14.0 as against 10.63.

Wiring Work Suspended

Before the war, some tramway extensions were authorized and new track was actually laid for a mile along Ferry Road from Granton Road to Crewe Toll, but in 1939 work was suspended and the wiring has never been erected. It seems doubtful if this or any other of the proposed extensions will ever come into service. Some indication of the way the wind is blowing may be gained from the withdrawal last March of the tram service from St. Andrew's Square to Liberton Dams via Toll Cross and Melville Drive. Instead .a cross-town bus service has been instituted.

Previously the residents of Birdiehouses and Kaimes. on the south side of the city, had to use a shuttle service to Liberton tram terminus and change there. On the other side, the bus service to Baraton called for doubledeckers, but owing to a low bridge, authority could only be given for their operation as far as Davidson's Mains. A new double-deck bus service was, therefore. put on from Davidson's Mains to the West End of Prince's Street, then over the 18 tram route to Liberton Dams and on to Birdiehouses. Most of Melville Drive will now only be serviced by trams in peak hours. The principle of cross-town workings has long been thoroughly exploited in Edinburgh, but this is the first time that a tram service has been replaced by buses.

Here again, despite this straw in the wind, it would be rash to jump to the conclusion that within a few years all the trams will have gone from Edinburgh and motorbuses will be reigning in their stead. As long as current is cheaper than it is in England there is always a chance for the trolleybus. One interesting point mentioned to me by Mr. Little. the city transport

manager, was the value of the trams in a capital city like Edinburgh, where processions are common.

The complete reversability of the tram permits shutting off successive portions of Prince's Street on State occasions without difficulty. Trolleybuses might have to be cut back a long way in these circumstances or would have to turn laboriously on their batteries, so causing congestion. As there are about 150 trams an hour in each direction along parts of Prince's Street at the peak, this point is one that cannot be overlooked.

Whenever I have been in Aberdeen. I have been impressed by the ubiquity of the tram service. On most routes during the greater part of the day there is almost always a tram in sight. This standard of service, coupled 'with the low fares, accounts mainly for the difficult financial position of the undertaking.

Delayed Bus Deliveries

Aberdeen first abandoned some tram routes in 1931. when the Torry and Ferryhili services were converted to bus working, but as in other Scottish cities, there has not yet been any general plan for tram abandonment, although it was agreed in 1945 to put buses on the Mannofield route, where the foundations of the road are collapsing and it would cost a formidable amount to reconstruct the worn-out track. So far it has not been possible to make the change, partly because of delayed bus deliveries but chiefly on the question of accommodation. As it will be necessary to convert Mannofield depot into a garage, accommodation must be found for the trams based there to work the Bridges routes.

This is being done by extending Queen's Cross depot at a cost of £42,000, to hold 70 instead of 27 cars. It will be some time yet before the Mannofield change can take place. Meantime, the department cannot find room for all the buses it has already.

Thirty-five new buses were expected during the first part of 1950. They will all be Daimler vehicles with Gardner engines-15 with M.C.W. bodies, 10 with Park Royal and 10 with Northern Coachbuilders bodywork. The department is also taking delivery of 10 Crossley 29-seat coaches with bodies by Brockhouse.

Despite the forthcoming abandonment of the Mannofield route, Aberdeen is not neglecting its trams. Just before the war two prototype 4-wheelers and two 8wheelers were ordered and delivered in 1940. Although orders were then placed for another 20 eight-wheelers, these could not be delivered until the end of hostilities and the last was not delivered until 1949. The cost of these trams—originally to have been £5,000 each, eventually came out at f11,000—enough to damp the enthusiasm of the keenest pro-tramway committee!

Abetdeen is fortunate in having electricity at a cheap rate as it is able to draw from the North of Scotland hydro-electric scheme. The new cars seat 76 and, to cope with the peak-hour crowds and short-distance riders, two conductors are carried on each car. This is the practice all day as there is a substantial mid-day peak and, for much of the year, good afternoon loadings. asked Mr. A. Smith, the transport manager, whether this did not make these cars uneconomic, but he said that they were earning 7d, per car-mile above the average for the remainder of the fleet and this more than covered the extra platform wages and the current consumed by the four-motor equipment.

The lay-out of the city makes it impossible to handle the peaks entirely by tram and much work falls on the buses. No fewer than 106 special bus journeys are scheduled to carry workers to and from the shipyards and fish wharves, and most of these journeys are operated on special cross-town routes differing from those used by the normal services.


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