LEAVES FROM THE INSPECTOR'S NOTEBOOK.
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The New Ministry of-Ways and Communications. Buses at York.
. THE LONG-EXPECTED new authority to control , the whole of the nation's transport is now. announeed—the, new Ministry of Ways and Communications. And it is beyond all doubt, as scheduled, to be a huge Government Department, upon the directorate of which railway interests are certain to be dominant. The threat to the healthy and vigorous deielopment of the industrial vehicle , and its necessary road is by no means a negligible one. , . Other pens than mine, I know, are busy analysing exactly what this new move means-to the industry in which we are all so particularly interested.. 1 should like to lodge a protest from a, point of view that will, . perhaps, not be taken by those who are primarily alarmed at the threat of railway dominance. .1 feel grave concern at the apparent ease with which the transport of the country, its life-blood, and the veins and arteries in which, it runs are to be handed over to
• a new creation of bureaucracy. That, indeed, is a danger that is, to my mind, a far more potent one than any other foreshadowed by the new announce ment. • , .. .
-Frankly speaking, it is one of the first evidences of the lethargic readiness of the country to endure to
, • be saddled with Government 'control of one kind and another as a. legacy oi a war-conceived makeshift which .braught into being unwieldy and inefficient .., staffs that accomplished .an immense amount, that wasted any amount, that made more muddles, and : mistakes even than successes, and that, bar a some-. what futile and aca,deinie "control" by the Treasury mandarins, had to take very little regard for money or where it came from. We can be. lenient to the. system-as it worked during war time, but we cannot afford to be tolerant of it in the coming days of industrial regeneration and endeavour.
• * * ,. * Sir Eric Geddes has been, chosen for the new chief . •—largely, I imagine, because his name has been ad;. vertised and boosted as one of the business men who pulled the country out of departmental inefficiency ;• and error. The real test of efficiency is not the ruthless scrapping -of old methods after 24 hours' consideration of them, but. the ability to substitute new means for old ones permanently and to maintain them , and develop them. Almost anyone with reasonable ability can wield a new broom to effect, and, without • :. losing reputation, •clear out before the -dust begins to settle. I think that Sir Eric Gdddes's appointment is ' one that has been decided upon solely to make the new Ministry palatable to the public and without any " very definite conviction that he will finallY " holdthe,
* A' , if-' No Government Department can he wholly or roa • sonably efficient in the business sense. The whole . system, than which, I admit, it would be difficult to , find a better, Tenders it impossible. It takes hold of the good man, fired with desire for improvement, and. in a surprisingly short space of time reduces him to relative impotency. The only way to control is to entourage self-help from the national point of view.
There are crowds of people anxious to perpetuatetheir "little brief authority," and as many contriving new jobs to enable them to do so. And their activetei cannot and will not be useful to the country. I never felt happy about that futile attempt to docket every butcher's cart and bakers van in the country. It cost a pile of money to label this, that and the other
vehicle 11 =ete., and the net result was quite negligible'. The road transport of the country does not need 'bureaucratic 'control ; it will be far better off without it. Whether the motor vehicle is to be made subsidiary to railway interests is not, to my mind, half so important a question as to whether individual effort is to be harassed, controlled, inspected by a vast new and unwanted' bureaucratic network.
Buses. at York—and Trams.
So "We, the councillors of York," have decided that motorbuses cannot be made • to pay in this ancient-city. It need not be assumed straight away, 'without further careful consideration, that the motorbus', as a passenger-transport proposition, is only in future to be regarded as a fit companion for Hun guns in provincial museums. It merely ID e an s that the York tramway authorities, with their mixed fleet of four machines, have not been able, by motorbus means, to cultivate traffic on routes upon which they were certain they could not make tramcars pay. Now, it so happens that I know the venerable city of York tolerably well, and I have never been able -fully to comprehend the stupidity of the, local authorities who decided that a tramway .system was suitable for a city laid cut on such ancient, albeit pictureesque, lines, a city encumbered though beautiful by tortuous narrow main thoroughfares and thousandyear-old embattled walls and bars.
When York first began to talk about superseding its very antiquated. horse tramway systetn—some years ago, now, when the local authorities decided it would be cheaper to sell the old cars as summer houses than to attempt to repair them, and to pull up the rails rather than to persuade them to stop in their Places in the .setts; it Jellto my lot, as ambassador for a very leading firm of industrial chassis maimfacturera, to go to York and to endeavour to persuade: the local councillors that York, as a whole, would be better served by a complete single-deck bus service rather than by a tramway which could not traverse the centre of the town or even approach some of the principal thoroughfares.
Bat the tramway scored, and I was finally and firmly turned down in spite of the very advantageous terms I was empowered to offer. I believe it to be a fact that the tramway system then decided upon has never paid, whereas I also knew for a fact that, had the whole services been entrusted. to a4competent motorbus organization, the traffic as awhole would certainly have resulted in a profit. As things turned out, the electrical experts decided to supplement the tiny tramway system withtthe aid of, I think, three electric buses, and apparently one petrol-propelled machine later—and, of course, they have not paid on such supplementary .work alone.
The council proposes te cure this state of affairs by curtailing the services, by not running them on Sundays at all, and -by charging extra for children. believe the salvation of York's little passenger-transport system is :to abandon the whole tramway system and to substitute for it a small but frequent service of modern peteol and steammotorbuses. Then, thewhole service could, I am convinced, be made to pay and traffic could be definitely encouraged rather 'than• discouraged. But I very much fear that they will just struggle on with their .little tramway service, which carefully runs all round the town and has to keep right away from the centre of it, leaving what is left over to the few buses which are now the subject of such practical .condemnation.