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PHASES OF PROVINCIAL BUS ACTIVITY.

18th November 1924
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Page 22, 18th November 1924 — PHASES OF PROVINCIAL BUS ACTIVITY.
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An Expert's Views on the Many Problems Associated with the Operation of Regular Passenger Vehicle Services.

ON THE occasion of a meeting of the local Midland section of the Institute of Transport in Birmingham on 1November 10th, Mr. 0 C. Power, vicepresident of the section, read a most instructive and informative paper. Although this was entitled, "Traffic Problems," it dealt in the main with outstanding features of bus operation, a subject of which Mr. Power has a comprehensive knowledge, since, as many of our readers may know, he is the traffic manager of the Birmingham and Midland Motor Omnibus Co., Ltd., who control a vast network of services in and around a number of busy industrial Midland centres.

We propose to extract some of the most interesting details of the paper, which, apart from being to a large extent based on local experience, also possesses a much wider significance. In opening his paper Mr. Power dealt with the serious difficulties concerning peak loads, and said that in every branch of transport numerous occasions are met when the work which has to be done is beyond the capabilities of the rolling stock which is available. The travelling public, he went on to say, is very fickle, especially at holiday periods, and transfers its patronage from one place to another without rhyme or reason, and, therefore, traffic officials have to keep in close touch on the spot with these changing phases. The ever-present difficulty, however, is that, whilst those who start early want to return late, those who travel during the day also want to return late, and this causes considerable congestion in the last journeys at night.

This problem has been solved by the company with whom Mr. Power is concerned by sending the buses which finish their schedule at night first, out on the various routes, to turn round at the halfway points in order to pick up wait:ina' passengers who would not be able to find accommodation on the buses that. conic through on their last journeys from the outer termini. In addition, as some of the company's sub-garages are situated in places from which they have a big return traffic to Birmingham in the late evenings; they arrange for the local buses to run through at night after they have finished their work, although this generally means that the vehicles return empty and run dead mileage—in some eases as much as 20-25 miles. At first sight, Mr. Power emphasized, .this

seems wasted mileage, but it really is not, as a full load one way is equivalent to half-load each way, and, in addition, faith is kept with the public. Mr. Power took the opportunity of commenting on the introduction of the Summer Time Act, which, he stated, had helped considerably to spread the loads better throughout the day, and he cherished the hope that next year, and in future years summer time would start earlier and finish later, as it does on the Continent.

On Bank Holidays Mr. Power's company always suspend the issue of ordinary and excursion return tickets as well as discount and anywhere tickets, as it has been found from experience that the public is quite willing to pay ordinary fares each way, and, moreover, if passengers do happen to be crowded out on the return journey at night, the company are, of course, absolved from any claim for the return of fares already paid. Mr. Power then went on to relate the various problems which are concerned with holiday traffic, and more particularly with the temporary suspension or curtailment of purely town services for the benefit of those who desire to travel into country districts.

Next to Bank Holiday traffic, the biggest peak loads occur on Saturday afternoons and evenings, especially in mining districts, and adequately to cater for this is a difficulty which Mr. Power considers almost insurmountable. He said that his company had endeavoured to attract some of the people who usually do their shopping on Saturdays to do it on the stack days by issuing cheap excursion return tickets, which are available on Tuesdays, Wednesdays and Fridays. Although this has helped to a certain extent, it has not reduced the Saturday crush to reasonable limits.

He thought that this difficulty could be somewhat mitigated if some employers would pay their workpeople in midweek, in this connection he also referred to the fact that the majority of works now open and close at the same time, and that, in consequence, the traffic of workpeople partly clashes with the ordinary business traffic. Mr. Power thought that this state of affairs might be remedied if the works were to open an hour or half an hour earlier and close correspondingly earlier, as this would help materially to reduce the congestion which it is impossible to prevent under the existing order of things.

Mr. Power proceeded to say that one of the main troubles of passenger traffic (and of goods traffic in a lesser degree), is that the rolling stock is only fully occupied for several hours per day, and anything that would tend to increase the daily use factor would materially improve the finances of all transport undertakings and, in all 'probability, enable further concessions in their charges to the public to be made.

Next to the question of catering for peak loads, the speaker considers the most difficult problem is to arrange time-tables for the various services On short town routes Mr. Power says it is generally agreed that the large doubledecked vehicle with rear entrance is most suitable, particularly if it can be fitted with a covered top. On longer routes the size of the vehicle causes a, good deal of concern, as speed becomes relatively more important than on a short routes, and, of course, the service Is less frequent. He then made reference to the new speed regalatiOns which were recominendad by a special committee several months ago, and mentioned that his company have been running pneumatictyred 32-seater vehicles of under 3i tons weight for over 12 months, arid that the verdict of the public is strongly in favour of them. The company have also put into operation 50-seater double-deck buses of under 4 tons weight, and these are much favoured on routes which are 20, 30 or 35 miles long, although the upper decks are not used in inclement weather. This, said Mr. Power, really renders a 50-seater double-deck-er a 28seater single-decker.

Following up these points, he offered the personal view that the road passenger vehicle of the future would he the pneumaVc tyred single decker, carrying about 30 passengers. At this juncture Mr. Power had much to say regarding the importance of the question of time-tables, and the need for ascertaining the local conditions on various parts of the route when these are being arranged. The author then outlined the difficu.l• ties of operating in foggy weather, and said that the peculiar part about road passenger traffic is that if you manage to maintain a service under such conditions you get very little patronage, so that from a revenue point of view alone the services can be curtailed without the public being. very much affected, In dealing with the subject of lights on vehicles at night, Mr. Power drew the attention of the assembly to the fact that on the " Midland fled" buses the men have strict instructions to switch their headlights off and to slow down

when approaching certain other classes of traffic. Under this heading he also made reference to the question of cyclists carrying rear lights, and said that he would like to see all such users of the road experiment with rear reflectors, which, although possibly not quite as satisfactory as rear lamps, would certenthbe an improvement. Following the reading of the paper a most animated discussion was held, in which Mr. Chas. Burgess, manager of the Walsall Corporation Tramways ; Mr. Owen Silvers, manager of the Wolverhampton 'Corporation Tramways ; Mr. G. F. Gettings, County Surveyor of Worcestershire ; Mr. D. 11. Brown, County Surveyor of Warwick-shire; Mr. G. F. Bilbrough, of the Birmingham. Chamber of Commerce ; and several prominent railway officials joined.


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