"TRAMS DOOMED."

Auckland Star, Volume LIX, Issue 32, 8 February 1928, Page 7

"TRAMS DOOMED."

EXPERT'S OPINION.

" Faced With Ruin From

Buses."

CO-OPERATION ESSENTIAL,

(By Cable.—Press Association.—Copyright.)

(Received 11.00 a.m.)

SYDNEY, this day.

Mr. R. W. Gunter, consulting engineer to the London General Omnibus Company, who has arrived from Auckland by the Marama, says that buses will eventually supersede trams.

All the fixed rail systems in the world are faced with ruination by bus competition and unless some form of co-opera-tion and co-ordination is reached tramway finances will become chaotic.

Mr. Gunter frankly admitted the impracticability of scrapping the entire tramway service but with the inevitability of buses dominating on the roads something had to be done.

His suggestion to the New Zealand Government was, he thought, the only one, that for the present the tramway system must be regarded as the backbone of the transport system, with buses operating as feeders to tlie general system, and the establishment of a sinking fund so that eventually trams could be replaced with standardised buses.

For this some form of central control was essential. Dual control was fatal.

Another suggestion was a penal fare. Where buses were obliged to charge a minimum fare in excess of the tram fare, a portion of this was handed over to the trams. It was found that this penal fare did not deter buses from operating.