The Commercial Motor Vehicle and Its Service to the Public.
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THERE IS so much money being spent upon road maintenance and road consteaction in these islands, and so much of that money is being provided in the form of licence duty by owners of motor vehicles, that every possible encouragement should be given to the elucidation of the many problems which beset the municipal and county councils and their engineers and surveyors in the provision of roads suitable for the traffic that they have to bear, and also for the much greater weight and volume of traffic that they will be called upon to bear in ten years' time.
The Conference of Scottish road authorities represented by the burgh councillors and engineers, road surveyors and town clerks, now being held in Edinburgh, is of considerable importance to road users, not only because they require to see exercised the utmost efficiency and economy in all road constructional and maintenance work, but. because they must needs watch their interests, and for that reason we are glad to find that there will be represented at the Conference the Automobile Association and Motor Union and the Scottish Commercial Motor Users Association.
• i Suggestions are sure to be put forward for such modifications of the motor duties as, if accepted and put forward as concrete resolutions by the Conference and ultimately adopted, would seriously tax the pockets of owners of commercial motor vehicles. We believe, for example, it will be contended that, as weight is a factor in road wear, it should be taken into consideration, in conjunction with horse-power, in arriving at the duty that should be payable. The argument that must be put forward in reply is to the effect that in arriving at the proportion of tax payable, there is no' justification for putting the. commercial motor on the same footing as the private car One serves the community and the other the individual, and it is common practice to call on the individual to pay on a, higher scale. A seat in an exclusive box is more costly than one, no less comfOrtable, in the communal pit. The proper viewpoint for taxation ref ormers places the commercial motor alongside the railway train. The road and-the railways are the great competitors, and operators upon' each must be encouraged to advance and to progress and to give of their best to the.public in the interests of that public. This end can never be attained by excessive taxation. At Work on the Diversion of London Traffic, THE NEW Director of Traffic, in London is initially approaching the question of congestion in the streets from the point of view of diversion of traffic from the chief centres, and, in order to secure this end, is proposing to secure the approval of the Commissioner of Police to the announcement of a list of alternative routes. London's arteries, unfortunately, converge to a number of junctions, and there is an absence of parallel routes of equal importance, such as one finds, for example, all over Paris. Thus, the congestion at the Bank, at Aldgate, at Piccadilly Circus, at Holborn Hall, at Charing Cross, at St. Giles's Circus, at Berkeley Street and similar bottle-necks is extremely great, and must impose a tremendous monetary tax upon the community in the course of a year. We have ourselves urged upon the Director the advisability of amending the standing instruction to cab drivers to take the direct route from the pickingup point to a fare's destination. By asking for permission to take a quicker but perhaps slightly longer route, much time could be saved for the fare, and congestion at the otherwise unavoidable traffic centres reduced. We believe that a great deal of improvement can be effected by seeking and securing the co-operation of owners of large fleets. By means of plans and detailed instructions, their drivers could. be shown how to avoid the busy centres, with the result of a general speeding-up of traffic. We think that the bus companies should be encouraged to use alternative routes more than is done. As an instance, the whole length of Shaftesbury Avenue should be traversed, thus reducing congestion at St. Giles's Circus. At present no bus passes along the upper half of Shaftesbury Avenue on the way from Cambridge Circus to Holborn or Bloomsbury, every bus, instead, traversing two sides of a triangle and avoiding the third.
Amongst the centres of congestion which Mr. Baseom has chosen for his first experiments are Piccadilly Circus, St. Giles's Circus (at the junction of Tottenham Court Road and Oxford Street., the junction of Wellington Street, Aldwych and the Strand. Camberwell Green, Elephant and Castle, Vauxhall Cross, the junction of Tottenham Court Road with Hampstead Road and Euston Road, Kensington High Street and Oxford Street. We hope that none of his earliest recommendations will be the removal of central standards, the cause of much congestion and delay, not to mention mishaps.
Fatigue in Metals.
THE GRADUAL weakening of a metal part which is subjected to rapid reversals of stress, commonly known as fatigue, is a subject concerning which many theories have been formulated. That much still remains to be learned concerning fatigue in metal parts is obvious from the fact that breakages in chassis components still occur, after periods of use.
Apart from the purely theoretical research work undertaken in laboratories, our knowledge of this difficult subject could be increased if the large users oftmotor vehicles were persuaded to send fractured parts, with full particulars, to some authority such as the Institution of Automobile Engineers. Classified experience of this kind would be extremely valuable to manufacturers and designers.
A feature of fatigue fractures is the regularity with which they are liable to recur. We remember the case of a certain engine crankshaft, in which one could be almost certain of a fatigue fracture after 10,000 miles' running, this contretemps occurring with almost unfailing regularity. Had accurate records been kept of the load, dimensions, material, and mileage, useful data concerning the safe working stress for similar parts could have been:, deduced.
The shape of the part has a considerable influence on the possibility of fracture, it being well known that a sharp corner is particularly liable to give rise to a crack, which will spread through the metal. Thus, in a certain case, persistent connecting-rod failures were definitely traced to an unduly sharp corner between the rod, and the big-end. It is interesting to . record that, in this instance, repeated representations on the part of a service station were required before the designers at the works could be induced to alter the shape of the part concerned. Here, as in other cases, there was a lamentable lack of co-ordination between the two departments of the firm, and much might be done to remedy this state of affairs, before proceeding to the more difficult question of collecting and classifying the breakdown experiences of users.