AN OUTCRY AGAINST TRAMCARS IN PARIS.
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A General Press Campaign in Support of the Use of a Greater Number of Buses.
-DOR several years past a steadily in
creasing volume of protest has been raised in the Paris Press against the continued existence of tramcars in the city. Newspapers of all shades of opinion, even the most violently antagonistic, agree upon this one subject that the trams ought to be suppressed and replaced by motor omnibuses.
For one thing the bus portion of the great municipal transport concern, the T.C.R.P., does not lose nearly so much
of the ratepayers' money every year, for the buses even contrive to make some kind of a profit.
Most serious of all, however, is the needless traffic congestion caused by the tramcars.. The Prefecture of Police ordered certain lines of tramway in the neighbourhood of the Place de l'Opera to be done away with so long ago as last autumn. The directors of the tramways begged for time, however, and up to the present not a rail has been lifted and the trams still screech merrily round the looped lines in this part of the city, where a trivial mishap, such as a blown fuse, will instantly cause a traffic block half-a-mile iu length.
The newspaper outcry, however, appears at length to have reached the Olympic heights where the tramway authorities sit. The directors seem to be desirous of showing to what extent the tramcars, far from being suppressed, are capable of suppressing all other forms of traffic.
In some of the finest avenues of Paris the chaos arising out of the replacement of overhead wires by conduits between the rails indicates that their efforts have already met with a fair measure of success.