4,500,000 Bus Tickets a Day.
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TN our fourth editorial in last week's _tissue we referred to the' fact that the London General Omnibus Company carried tw-elve hundred and fifty million passengers per year. The figure was so stupendous that someone blundered and it appeared as twelve hundred and fiftY thousand. . Actually the normal traffic of the company's services is 44million passengers per day, but with certain slack days in the course of the year this figure is not maintained as an average. This traffic involves the issue of 4i million tickets per day, and when it is remembered that the whole of the work of issuing tickets and way-bills to the conductors, the checking of the conductors' returns at the end of the day, the preparation of the bell-punches, etc., is concentrated in one building at Chiswick, the mind gains some idea of the colossal nature of the task. The money is handed over at the garages on the return of the conductors at the end of each spelt of work, and there elteeked before banking, otherwise one would say the task would be impossible. As it is, the work is carried out by 300 girls, and has been so systematized that it is put through expeditiously: We watched the work one day last week and observed an application of the conveyor system which would delight the lover of efficiency in business. Conductors' boxes of tickets, each with the bell-punch and way-bill, are brought from the garage to the ticket depot in steel eases locked up, the conductor having one box and punch in use whilst the other set is being examined, checked, replenished and prepared. The box is emptied on a tray, the tickets and punch arranged, and with a new way-bill placed beside them, the box, tickets and punch are laid on a conveyor belt, which passes as a travelling table in front of a long line of girls. Each girl has about 15 seconds in which to do her part. Each value ticket is made up to the number required for u day, the serial numbers are entered on the way-bill, and the record on the punch showing the number of tickets issued on the previous day is' verified with the used waybill -and the indicator then set to zero. after which the punch is closed and sealed. By the time the 'box has reached the end of the conveyor (a matter of acouple of minutes) it is replenished and • ready to go into the conductor's bands, being packed in readiness for conveyance by motor van (old E-type chassis being used for this job) to the garage during the night, the vans returning with the used boxes.
The machinery fer this work of box preparation is elaborate and the installation expensive, for the trays of tickets in great movable racks in front of the girls must contain tickets by the million, yet one realizes that this installation has been devised to save the tremendous labour of moving, handling and transferring that otherwise must be employed.