DOG-IN-THE-MANGER MUNICIPALITIES.
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By "The Inspector."
THE VERY clear indication of the attitude of some, at any rate, of the leading municipalities in the country, particularly those who are very heavily engaged in municipal tramway enterprises, with regard to the competition of the independent public-service motor vehicle, has been revealed during the past week or two, in an indirect manner, through difficulties arising from the coal strike and its resultant shortages of po-wer and of many other facilities.
One of the principal municipalities, faced with the imminence of a partial or complete stoppage of their very extensive tramway system—and, for the moment, at any rate, the name of the corporation in question shall not he mentioned—was approached with a suggestion that public-service licences of a temporary character should be issued in considerable numbers in order that petrol-driven chars-bebancs and motorbuses could be used in large. numbers as alternative public conveniences &neing the suspension of tramways facilities. The application was prompted by commonsense appreciation that no stone should be left unturned to ensure, so far as possible, the maintenance of public facilities and the mitigation, so far as was feasible, of the troubles that were bound to ensue when the normal facilities for travel had perforce to be denied to the working portion of the population.
The corporation in question,. however, scented danger. Far more important to them than the taking of steps to meet this grave upsetting of the daily life• of the ordinary citizen was the risk, which suggested itself to them at once, that the self-contained publicservice machine would, were facilities of.nthis kind once granted to it, achieve for itself, of necessity, a first-class advertisement of its capacity, and would ensure that the public would have placed before. it in very practical fashion an exhibition of one of the outstanding advantages which accrue to the machine which is not rail-bound and which does not depend for its power on central-station instalIaticin. The applications, in short, were abruptly refused—they were not thought necessary !
Apart from the particular instance' the writer has in mind, which is that of one of the greatest industrial and business centres in the north of England, such action has had its counterpart elsewhere in the country during the past week or two. 'Municipalities, shackled by their commitments in connection with electric-tramway schemes of more or less ambitious nature, sohemes that havefinally disproved the contention that there was money tatbeemade in tramways as in no other way, are becoming increasingly alarmed at the prospect of the certain ultimate suppression of the tramway by the independent machine. Th.ey are in none too great a hurry to faeilitate.the transition and, although they know very well themselves that it has to happen sooner or'laier, although they know that they either will have to pull up their tracks and pull down their poles, or alternatively, as has happened already in one district, to bury their tracks under a thick coating. of road surfacing material—probably the cheapest and quickest way of getting over the .; difficulty and one that will be adopted by the bolder authorities—they are not prepared to hasten that day, but; rather, have chosen to endeavour to postpone the public and frank avowal that the independent machine is the vehicle which will carry the public on the highways and streets of the great centres before many years are past.
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A great many of us realize how much this transition is being forwarded by the mere mai. in the street.. He is a factor in all such developments that one is often inclined to neglect. We go on, week by week and month by month, feeling that we. are ploughing very heavy land in trying to convert the municipal authorities to more advanced methods. Ent. we suddenly wake up to find that the authority has lagged behind the private citizen who, generally speaking, is a fairly well-informed person and is endowed very often with a great deal of foresight and a natural aptitude to appreciate progress in matters municipal and to disregard the claims of vested interests.
That has happened to-day. The man in the street is convinced that the motorbus is shortly to enter on its day. It is extraordinary how often one hears, in ordinary conversation in these days, actual remarks in this direction by men without any special claims to abstruse knowledge of matters municipal, or of the problems involved in the higher phases of traffic control and operation. The opinion is that the independent vehicle will, undoubtedly, before very long, have crept right past the tramcar • with all its maze. and network of electrical distribution apparatus, to say nothing of its rails. The public, generally speaking, is thoroughly well-conyineed that the tramcar has had its day, and the public is well ahead of the municipal authority in that. direction One the most. useful factors in its education has been itslexperienee of the ehar-a-hanc.s. The last few years have taught it the convenience of the self-contained machine. It. only wants now the evolution nf the all-weather type to supersede the char-ab.ancs, with its clumsy Cape. cart hood, for progress along these. lines to be even more rapid than it has been during the past year or two.
There are motorbus services of considerable size in plenty in this country alone already. Here and there there have been failures from a financial point of view, but, of course, the tale of financial failure in tramway 'enterprise' has been a vastly greater and more serious one. In the case of the motorbus undertakings that have lost. money, there are one or two well-known instances of a serious nature. It is undeniably a fact that their troubles have arisen, either from the use of machines unsuitable for the work and costly in the matter of maintenance on that account, or because of the injudicious planning of the area of operations for the self-contained machine, the choice of unsuitable mates and the throwing of the responsibility for unremunerative and undeveloped districts on the motorbus department, only without corresponding set-off in the way of good revenue-earning lines.
There are already many more successful services than there are unsuccessful. But ill news flies apace and it is most desirable that the public should be educated by reminders of successful operations in proof of the fact, that the motorbus can, if of a proper type and if operated in proper circumstances, not only be made to meet. the public convenience in a way which has never been possible with tramway organization, but that, in doing .so, it can be relied upon to earn revenue.
The position is a very different one to-day from what it was even in the years immediately preceding the war.