Pooling Taxicabs.
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The reduced numbers of taxicabs which are available in London require to be regulated and used in relation to war conditions. There is too often a shortage at railway termini on the arrival of express and other trains. The lucky few who, by bribery or importunity, obtain the services of such motorcahs as are in attendance, leave behind them an unlucky majority of would-be hirers who endeavour to suppress their lamentations, but whose difficulties are obvious to companions in misfortune and lookers-on.
We have to suggest that something should be done forthwith to ensure the pooled use of taxicabs in London and other cities. There are difficulties in the way, but they can be overcome. Universal pooling is unnecessary, but a beginning should be made at the railway termini. We hope that there may be a conference on this subject between the Metropolitan Police and a joint committee of the general managers or superintendents of the line of railway companies with London termini. Call for some change of method in the control of taxicabs, in order to meet war conditions and the better to serve the legitimate needs of members of the public who are travelling by rail with luggage, is urgent. The railway companies have the best chance of any trading corporations to institute the departure in favour of which we write. These companies can exert some control over the taxi-drivers----both rational and the irrational ones-:-by reason of the fact that the motorcabs stand on the companies' private ground Admission for taxi-drivers to the station-yards and platform-approaches can be made dependent in the future upon readiness to allow the pooled use of the cab. We do not suggest that the taxi-drivers should be paid double fares, for the existing scale of extras, applying to passengers in excess of two and to each piece of luggage carried beside the driver, is sufficient added compensation for the services which any driver will render.
The proposal is merely that, so far as each railway tenninus'is concerned, one or more responsible porters or railway policemen should be told off to the duty of ensuring the 'regulation of the new scheme. it would be necessary to call out that a particular cab had a passenger in it who was going to such and such a station or point, and thereupon to require the driver to take as a joint fare, and the first hirer to accept as company, any other would-be hirer for the same destination, or for a point on the same route. This modification of pre-war practice should be particularly applicable, by way of a start, in respect of passengers travelling from one railway termini to another. Our own observation satisfies us that there are hundreds of cases daily in which a single passenger utilizes a taxicab from one station to another, the while other passengers for the same destination are left behind to suffer varying degrees of delay, before another taxicab is available, if not actually to be forced to abandon an intended connection at another station. This "first come first served" 11SP, of taxicabs is both selfish and inconsistent with war-neriod conditions of life,
Preparations for Additional Output of Steam Wagons.
We are much interested to know that this country's leading makers of steam wagons are fully alive to their after-peace prospects. Practically all of our oldesta,blished makers of steam wagons have given of their best in munition and other war service for the past 21 years, and the principal works in this category are still absorbed in part upon prpduction which is not concerned with steam wagons. Schemes for reversion to normal class of output are none the less continuously in mind, ns to which point we can give personal assurances to our many readers who look forward to placing increasing reliance after the peace upon vehicles which use home-produced fuels.
The demand for steam wagons will, so far as we can ascertain by " feelers " which we have put out amongst our many user friends, be a very much more general one in the future than it was before the war, and especially will this be the case on account of its having been proved that the use of rubber tires upon steam lorries is a commercial advantage. We may incidentally recall our consistent advocacy of the use of rubber tires for these vehicles, by reason of their enabling them to run quietly on paved thoroughfares. Much public objection to steam wagons has undoubtedly been removed by their present-day approach to comparative silence of operation when running, although one still hears objections raised against them in respect of blowing off steautl use of clinkering or firing irons, and noise from certain types of feed pumps, when such vehicles are standing by in yard-spaces for loading near commercial offices. The conveyance of heavy loads by steam wagons, where speeds between 5 and 8 m.p.h. are sufficient, with or without trailers, more particularly for certain trades and certain localities, is undoubtedly the cheapest form of haulage in the country, other than water-carriage, taking all costs into consideration, from point of collection to point of delivery. It is only in respect of Classes A and B of the General Railway Classification that the steam wagon sometimes cannot compete. The projected increases of railway rates may bring some of cite goods and materials which are rated in Class B within the limits of econoinic,a1 haulage by steam wagon ; practically the whole of those in Class C will soon fall in that category, inclusive of heavy chemicals. There are, of course, additionally, mileage zones to be taken_ into account, before economy can be realized in relation to rail charges plus terminal cartages, for each of the lower railway classifications. It is the steamwagon industry above all which will benefit from the inevitable increases of railway rates.
Steam-wagon practice after the war will be very much on the lines of pre-war days, but we .cati at least vouch for the existence of new designs by one maker of world-wide repute, to the end that he may succeed in bringing his after-peace types of steam wagons to the best running advantage within the contemplated several weight-and-speed classifications of the wew L.G.B. regulations which are due this year.