A Public-service "Unit" The Large and the Small of It.
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London is threatened with a plague of street irondads—of " Dreadnoughts " in the wrong place. Our cartoon (page 137) portrays the artist's ideas upon the outcome of a present-day tendency, and these, if admittedly extreme, accord in principle neither with accepted conceptions of fa.irplay, nor the legitimate requirements of the public. It looks as though the motorbus were for ever to be controlled and regulated, practically and otherwise, while electric tramcar development, apparently without let or hindrance, blatantly proceeds apace upon lines which must still further restrict, if not prevent, the reasonablyfree use of the highway by all classes of traffic. We have already asked how room is to be found for two 78-seated L.C.C. cars as a unit, and we trust, though somewhat fearfully, the experiment—at a cost of £400 odd for coupling equipment and joint-control gear—will prove convincingly that so huge a combination is not practicable in London. Its overall length would be approximately 67 feet, compared with a maximum of 23 feet for a London motorbus. whilst the latter type of vehicle may 111 no -circumstances haul a trailer; its total weight (laden) would he sonic! 37 tons, compared with an average of about 61tons for a laden, old-pattern, double-deck motorbus; its Unladen weight would be, say, 28 tons, whereas that of a modern omnibus may not exceed 3; tons; its speed, unless all other tramcars were to be impeded, would legally he as high as 18m.p.h. in ninny busy thoroughfares, whilst the motorbus may not legally exceed 12m.p.h.; and it would have an enormous extent. of covered top-deck accommodation, which is wholly denied to the motorbus. These comparisons, we feel well satisfied, are sufficient to make clear the anomalous and di
erging regulations of which we complain. Justice is set at naught, in the result, even under existing circumstances, and the establishment of a Central Traffic Board for London appears to us to provide the only remedy.