PIRATES IN THE PROVINCES.
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• Once a Familiar Figure in the Metropolis, thd "Bus Pirate," "The Inspector" Points • Out, is Rapidly Increasing in Numbers in Rural Areas.
'LUTE a number of us can throw back our Q in
.. . mds to the thrilling exploits of the pirate .horse-bus in the London streets. It has always beeti a favourite with the present writer, who, as a schoolboy; remembers with glee the free •and easy devil-may-care methods of these freebooters of the regular .buts routes. They were; for a long while, thorns in the side of the established and organized public' service companiee, particalarly of the old LOadon General Omnibus Company and its great rival the London Read 'Car Company. The :London General of those days had considerable French associations, and it. will • be recalled .by many that the Road Car Company was started as its British rival, and for many years the buses of the latter concern flew little Union Jacks as an emblem of their nationality. Both of them had a lot to put up with from hordes of privately •owned buses, many of the owners of winch were constantly in trouble with the licensing authorities for breaches of the regulations and, occasionally, for Using unfit horses or for creating obstruction in the streets. Some of them, however, were quite respectable fellows and, of course, had as much right to earn their living by carrying passengers through the sereets of the Metropolis, in duly licensed vehfcles, as had the bigger and better organized cor porations. * * " *
• They robbed the big companies of much revenue, as they were not. too particular about "times,' and it musti be confessed they had even less compunction about standardization of fares.. They were keen psychologists, those drivers and conductors of the .old pirates ; they knew very well when an old-time "aunt from the country" was up for a day in town, and they did not hesitate to charge her ed.. all the Way from St. Paul's Churchyard to the Bank, or 1s: it need be. In time, however, they were gradually pushed off the road by the bigger organizations, and the motorbus itself played a large part in sealing the doom, of the borne-bus pirate.
They were probably called " pirates" because of their careless freedom with regard to their obser. vance of restrictions and regulations; they were not of the cut-throat variety and, although their manners were a little easy se far as the public andpassengers were concerned, the suitability of their title was not borne out by any of the more blood-thirsty piratical characteristic Which, we have been taught, existed in the earlier and more romantic days. • * * * There were pirates as such in the early motorbus days, but they were quite well-conducted ones. They were the owners of individual motorbuses or of fleets of two or three, and they deliberately " nursed " the regular services and picked up such traffic as the'y could. They did very well at it so far as revenue was concerned, but, of course, they were poorly equipped to combat the regular stream of mishaps which everybody experienced while endeavouring to operate the earlier models, ill-suited as they were to public service conditions. Expenses broke the backs of these early free-lance of the road and they gradually disappeared; some ef them were absorbed by the bigger companies, others by the official receiver.
There is no reason to-day, however, why motorbus operation on independent lines should not be possible. This derveloptnent has not taken place to any extent as yet in the Metropolitan area, but in dozens of provincial areas to-day.there are hordes of pirates pursuing their merry 'career. It is a little difficult for the ordinary man in the street to realize how rapidly motorbus development is taking place all over the country, between small towns and villages, serving market towns and connecting up great areas of scattered population, but if one has occasion to drive from one end of the country to the other' one will inevitably be impressed with the fact that there are, literally, hundreds of pirate services in full operation to-day, and in many places where e regular service has been established and has been proved to he profita.bly,'.established with something approaching' the standard type of motorbus, the single-decker, 32-seater, or something of that kind. There have been lots of people who have jumped at the conclusion that there is plenty of money to he made in this way, and who have rushed to put into service all kinds of public service machines running right down to the 14-seater converted Daimler or the 16or 18-seated Ford. In some areas this tendency has gone so far that routes are actually overcrowded with machines far in advance of the current trafficearning capacity of the road.
It is diffietilt.to see how this sort, of thing is to he controliCd in any way. Providing the maclune is ot a suitable type to run andto meet the requirements of the publie-service-vehicle licensing authorities, whoever they may be for the district, there is no limit to the number of maehines which may be put on the road in this way.Properly organized services. of satisfactory machineintended to convey pasSengers• at profitable but economical rates have, until recently, been steadily and usefully developing road passenger traffic in rural districts, not only to the detriment. of local rail services, but also resulting in the creation of entirely new traffic by the cultivation Of the .travel habit in people, who have not previously had any facilities for starting from their own kerbside in a small Village for a journey to a neighbouringtown or settlement. Whereas this has all, hitherto, been resulting very satisfactorily for the industry as a whole, the writer is of the opinion that, unless some effective check can be found for the more or less headlong rush that is now taking place to carry people on the road at unremanerative and cut-throat rates with unsuitable machines, much damage will be done to the legitimate development of provincial services.
There is a great accession to the ranks of the pirates in the provinces. They have every right, or course, to attempt to earn a living in this way, providing they can persuade the authorities that they are not exposing the travelling public to any undue personal risk. On one route that is known to the writer, whereas two or three singlealeekers on regular serviee were, until recently, adequately serving local requirements arid were securing rates that covered the cost of operation and a reasonable profit, to-day there are 17 or 18 machines, Varying from 4-ton double deckers down to Ford and Fiat pneumatic tyred 14and 18-seaters, cutting each others' thrOate by carrying passengers at rates which cannot pay for the service on proper lines. So mad has the rush been to share in this new source of revenue that, in one instance, even the local parson and his curate have acquired machines and have become fully fledged pirates. The regular services will be the survivors,. although they will have a very lean time while they are fighting the pirates or while the pirates are cutting their own throats in attempting to snatch a temporary advantage in this way.