Tramway Excursion Fares.

Press, Volume LX, Issue 17989, 5 February 1924, Page 8

Tramway Excursion Fares.

It is not surprising that the Tramway Board refused again yesterday to authorise cheap excursion runs to the seaside. It was clear enough from the attitude of some members when the matter was discussed last month that Mr Walter's eminently sensible suggestion would get no consideration. But it certainly is surprising that Mr Flcsher and Mr Barr should have opposed the motion in the interests of the people living at the seaside. Apart from the absurdity of the argument that profit must not be made on the Brighton line unless it can also be made on the line to Sumner—an absurdity that we have sufficiently emphasised before —it is preposterous to suppose that the people living at the seaside would object to any scale of fares from the city that would give them more visitors. Those who travel to the city now get concession fares, and if they did not they would bo so much tho more eager to see crowds arriving to spend money among them. It is -odd, too, that the sensitiveness of these members to the demands that would be sure to be made at ono end of tho tram-line disappears at the other end. There are ten times as many people "demanding" concessions from tho city to the sea as from the sea to the city, but thi3 "demand" has no terrors. And in any case there could be no objection to cheap fares from the seaside i£ there were a eufa-

cient number of people "wanting them. What Mr Plesher and Mr Barr clearly fear is that there would bo verv few wanting them—unless, of course, they are really as extraordinary as they apparently want ns to think they are in their reactions to deviations from routine. It is nnfortnnate that Mr Walter's proposal has been deferred to a time of the year when its chances of suceess are so much smaller than in summer. It is a calamity that it should have been deferred for such reasons.