A TRAMWAYS MANAGER ON BUSES — AND TRAMS.
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The Views of a Plymouth Municipal Official,
AVIGOROUS defence of the tramcar as a means of passenger transport in large towns, as against those who urge the scrapping of trams and the substitution therefor of motor omnibuses, was forthcoming from Mr. H. P. Stokes, manager of the Plymouth Corporation Tramways and Transport Service, at a recent meeting of the Plymouth Rotary Club. Taking as his subjeat "Street Passenger Transport." Mr. Stokes contended that individual vehicle transport was primarily responsible for street congestion, coupled with the increasing use of roads in preference to railways for carrying heavy goods and the selfish use of streets by many owners of private motorcars.
He expressed the view that trams had a far -greater freedom from accident than any other form of street transport, were the most economical and only adequate means of dealing with dense traffic, and occupied far less road space per passenger than the motorbuses which were wive competing with them. So far as Plymouth is concerned, Mr. Stokes said that if the entire tramway service were replaced by buses, the road space now occupied by the trams would be occupied and the whole of the remaining space as well, leaving no room for private vehicles.
He then pointed to many factors which, in his view, are in favour of the tramcar, and followed by sayirtg that, although the motorbus posed as a fair competitor of the tramways, actually very little of the total cost of road maintenance was borne by this type of vehicle. Quoting actual figures, he showed that the contributions to the Road Fund from motor taxation last year amounted to £18,000,000 and the cost of road maintenance throughout the country to over f50,000,000, to which had to be added at least £8,000,000 more paid by tramway undertakings. Mr. Stokes revealed the interesting fact that a recent census of the traffic on the main roads showed that 82 per cent, of the vehicles travelled on the tramway track, and the excessive use of this track by other road users was causing continually increasing cost to the trainwaya departments. Pursuing this point, he added that if the cost for road maintenance be made chargeable to its proper sources, the Plymouth tramways undertaking could wipe out Its remaining outstanding capital debt within five or six years.
Mr. Stokes admitted that, us feeders to an existing tramway system and as the means of linking up thinly populated areas, there was no vehicle at the present time which could compare with the motorbus ; but he toned down his enthusiasm by adding that, in comparison with the trams, it never stood on a strictly competitive basis in so far as its obligations to the taxpayer, in general were concerned. Be next went on to enumerate these obligations imposed upon tramways, and expressed the decided opinion that the proprietors of motor omnibuses incurred not one of these obligations, and that if they bore their full quota of responsibility for road maintenance it would be necessary to charge three times as much for a bus as for a tram ride.
Mr. Stokes told his listeners that the whole population of Plymouth was carried on the trams 150 times every year with 120 vehicles, and with the buses it was carried 19 times with 47 vehicles, It would require 7i times the existing number of vehicles to deal, by means of buses, with the amount of traffic handled by the trains.
The tramways, continued Mr. Stokes, would continue for many years to be an important factor in the life of the community. It was not the tramways system, but tramways legislation, which was obsolete. In one ease a small town had had to spend £4,500 to promote a Parliamentary Bill in order to run six small buses, whereas any private person could put them on the road by taking out only the requisite licences.
In regard to the traffic problem generally, Mr. Stokes said he was of the opinion that the day was not far distant when traffic from the outer circle of all large centres of population would be required to unload at the outer fringe and use public conveyances for internal transport, otherwise the streets would never be able to carry the burden and it would be quicker to walk than to ride, although the pavements would then also be congested.