Should Passenger Transport Be Free?
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VOUR recent note on the question" Should Passenger Transport Be Provided Free? interested me greatly, as it has been one of my pet ideas for a long time, Only a few miles froni my home is an actual working example of free transport which has been in operation for many years. I refer to the Woolwich Free Ferry, which is run out of the L.C.C. rates and comprises four large steamboats each capable of carrying about 40 vehicles and hundreds of passengers. Actually, of course, this is pure Communism, fvhich comes as rather a• shock to many good people who think that Communism means wearing a beard and wanting to kill someone !
A scheme of free transport would, I am sure, prove of such benefit to the community that after a little while we should wonder how we ever got on without it. After all, the roads are free to all; rich man, poor man, beggarman, thief, are all entitled to walk on them and no one suggests that the police should stop pedestrians and ask to see a rate receipt, the alternative being prison! Yet the roads cost much more to make and maintain than would the vehicles that traverse them. So why not, for
a slight extra cost, complete the job and let, everyone ride?
The only objection is that, whilst the cost would be obvious, the benefits would not be so easily perceived, although they would be there just the same. After all, if the L.C.C. thinks it 'necessary to carry you over the water free, why not over the ground? We have abolished toll-gates, but what is a present-day bus but a mobile toll-gate? HAYDN SMITH. Orpington.
[We are at a loss to know whether this contribution was written in a serious or a humorous vein. The suggestion is really revolutionary, but we will leave others to discuss its merits or demerits.—En.]