MOTORBUS PROPAGANDA WANTED.
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By "The Inspector."
MANY OF US .do not realize the extent to which the motorbus is gradually and steadily becoming an accepted part of our communal organization in this country.. The progress made in this direction, perhaps not startling in respect of actual installations and the establishment of services, but most certainly from the point of view of the education of the municipal .authority, has been nothing short of remarkable during the relatively short period since the termination of the war.
It is onlya few years age, relatively, that we were accustomed, when thinking of the motorbus, to visualize the one or two outstanding and almost historic services or groups of services. The L.G.O.C., Tillings, the Birmingham group, and a feW scattered railway services, such as the Great Western, NorthIlastern, North-Western, anti, of course, the rapidly increasing ramifications of the rural and inter-urban services inaugurated by Mr. French, were amongst the principal examples that we all had in mind when we talked of this new method of passenger service. Other people flirted with the idea, municipalities discussed it in the ultra-contentious way that is not unusual with such gatherings, yards of stuff were written in all sorts of papers as to the possibilities of developing road services as a set off to local tram and railway services, but, with it all, the progress actually made did not in any way correspond with the amount that was talked and written of its possibilities.
. Now, as a matter of fact, we have reached a stage when the motorbus is very definitely accepted as a necessity in all sorts of districts, in all kinds of conditions. There is still contention between the protram and the pro-bus enthusiasts, but the motorbus is nowadays a mighty antagonist, and no longer is it necessary .for those who are convinced of its superiority in 50 many circumstances to beg on their knees for a hearing. There is always somebody. on every council who wants to know why this, that, and the other factor offered by motorbus operation cannot be more fully considered. This stage in the development of passenger transport has been reached without any general realization as to the development which has actually taken place to date.
One of the outstanding confirmations of the new attitude is the necessity for the inquiry that is now to take place by a committee appointed .1:137 the Ministry of Transport as to whether railway companies. shall have recognized rights to operate on the roads as well as on the rails on an eXtended and exchisive scale— in other words, whether they shall develop areas not only as auxiliary to their main business of carrying people on the rails, but as a. definite part of their function of looking after the transport of separate areas in themselves. It is being discussed as an actual need, not as a chimerical proposal.
A great many of Ile want shaking up pretty badly in this connection. We want to. be made to realize exactly what the new position is with regard to the motorbus : its claims and its magnificent opportunitiee. We want to realize that no longer 'need we go hat in hand and ask to be allowed to follow the remarks of the tramway magnates with a sort of minority report.
One direction in which this position should roe grappled with more energetically, without any further delay, is, in the writer's opinion, that of intensive propaganda in such cases, for instance, as that of the Durham authorities who are contemplating gigantic tramway extensions. Surely_ the S.M.M. and T. or other of the big trade societies .shouId be able to devote the very considerable funds of which they have disposal, or, at any rate, a portion of them, to propaganda work, and such propaganda work could not be better based at the present time than in consolidating the position which the motorbnsilias won for itself solely on its merits, and that position is a vastly stronger one than a great many of us realize.
It is all very well for individual firms to send their demonstration machines, and their most talkative and persuasive salesmen to secure individual orders : that does not have the effect the writer has in mind. All such talk and action are more or less rightly classified as " special pleading." What is wanted is a defini0 and well-considered scheme of propaganda, here arid nowt to drive plenty of very hefty nails into the coffin of those who have made it their business, for some while past, to belittle and pooh-pooh the poosibilities of motorbus alternatives. The time to hit the tramway people particularly is when they are "staggering." They will never become owners to any great extent of motorbuses while they can cling to their rails, as is evidenced by their playing with that hybrid compromise. the trolleybus, for so long.