WINTER PASSENGER VEHICLE SERVICES.
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A Sphere of Activity in which All-the-year-round Use is Found for Buses and Coaches.
ONE OF the local spheres in which ONE vehicles fulfil a very useful service is between stations and hotels, stations and steamer landing stages, and so on.
In all parts of the country there are hotel proprietors operating a small type of saloon conveyance, generally seating rot. more than ten persons. These conveyances, if they are stationed in seaside towns, are employed to meet the principal trains arriving each day, and passengers who intend to stay at the hotel from which they are run are provided with free conveyance. With regard to outivard traffic, the coach is useful for the conveyance of passengers' luggage to the stations, although in season the demand is very often so great that passengers prefer to hire their own conveyances.
In many towns, where hotel pro • prietors and others do not show enterprise of this kind, there is often a local moter bus or coach proprietor who steps into the breach, although his arrangeMents in the mattes of fares, etc., are usually on a more businestlike footing.
So far as Liverpoolis concerned, it may seem strange that in a city where there are three terminal stations and S. sanding stage within half-a-mile radius, there is no public passenger service which connects up these four very live centres. At one time, when the Liverpool Corporation motocbus enterprise was at its height, vehicles were ens-. played to link up the stations, and then ran in torn between the three Main termini. The. taxicab proprietors were resentful of the Corporation's action in running a service, which, however, did port is called out at all hours of the day and night to meet incoming liners or to deliver passengers to outgoing vessels. The coaches are employed in running between the emigrant boarding houses, • the steamship companies' offices, stations, and liners at the docks.
The steamship companies' arrangements as a ride are so complete that a transmigrator arriving at Liverpool by rail has no trouble whatever in being safely passed on to the next stage of his
Journey. On arriving at a station at night, passengers find the hue waiting to take them to an emigrant boarding house for the night, and on the following morning they are re-conveyed to the companies' offices, and then to the ship.
The Belfast Steamship Co., whose Irish steamer leaves the Liverpool landing stage about 10 o'clock every night,' have a saloiin motor coach which meets the London train arriving at Limo Street at about 9.50 p.m. The journey between Lithe Street and the landing stage is a little over half a mile, andas the road to the pier-head is not a direct one; the usefulness of the bus generally is very muds appreciated. Passengers merely step out of the train into the bus which is • stationed -.alongside, the • platforin. Such is, the nature of the service fulfilled by the 40-seater Straker-Squire, owned by the Belfast. Steamship Co.. This vehicle, of course, has a daily round of tasks, ind meets iathef trains Mid:con veys passengers to mil frail the; boats.
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