A Win for Motor Omnibuses.
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Oxford's parochial electors have refused to approve the action of the Oxford City Council in regard to electric traction. We have followed the course of events with close interest during the past six months, and have given the fullest publicity to the several experts' reports, council meetings, and discussions, in numerous issues. Mr. Stephen Seilon, who is consulting engineer to the British Electric Traction Company, advised the pro-tram party, whilst the claims of motor omnibuses were reported upon by Mr. W. Worby Beaumont, who has recently been chosen by the Home Secretary as technical assessor to the Chief Commissioner of Police for the Metropolis. The situation was complicated by a separate and anterior resolution of the Oxford City Council to purchase the old horsed tramways, at a sum variously estimated to reach anything between 425,000 and 430,000, and which decision was promptly embodied—largely through the business astuteness of the Tramway Company's solicitor—in a binding agreement. The town clerk, by a series of easy stages; at each of which he assured the council that he was committingthe city to nothing, gradually allowed it to dawn on the members that they were, subject to the supposedly trifling formality of a town's meeting, engaged to go through with a scheme of electrification which was to cost at least ,32,000. The Bill had been deposited, and everything seemed in order. The pro-train party had, however, gauged the local feeling very erroneously. Close upon ,500 ratepayers cheered motor omnibuses to the echo on Wednesday of last week, and threw out the electric traction scheme by an enormous majority. This triumph for motorbuses should give pause to other townswhose authorities are dallying with a system that is unsuited to their population and needs, and we hail it as a realisation of the hopes, which were raised by the Eastbourne Corporation more than three years ago, that road motors must win.