The Press Tuesday, June 2, 1925. Tramway Board.

Press, Volume LXI, Issue 18397, 2 June 1925, Page 8

The Press Tuesday, June 2, 1925. Tramway Board.

There is a good deal in the Tramway Board's reply to its critics "with which all reasonable people will agree. The Chairman was entitled at the outset to set one critic against another and to seek what shelter he could in the resultant confusion. It was his duty also to protest against personal and unfair attacks on the staff, if he supposed that theso had been made; though so far as "The Press" is concerned carc was taken that they were not made. It was right to repeat, and to repeat with emphasis, that if the Board were to seek "easy relief by way of the rates" the result would be slack administration and an increasing dependence on | the ratepayers from year to year; and no one can deny the soundness of his conclusion 1 that tlio object of the Board is to secure, if possible, the happy mean between the fare that is too high to attract passengers and the fare that is too low to pay. The Board's defence is in fact sound at the points at which it should never have been attackod, and if his responsibility ended with answering random criticism, the Chairman could_how sloep in peace. But the purpose of'a special meeting was surely to justify the new policy positively, and not to excuse it negatively. The public want to, know how the trams are to bo made to pay their way if' they hav.e been rendered less popular, and in particular what the Board has done and is doing to make the system conform with the standards of ordinary business!. The Chairman, as a proqf of the Board's efficient management, says that, "after '<' eighteen years' '--during which wages and the sale price of newspapers have gone up, 100 per cent. —'' the Board pro"poses to, advance the two-section "cash rides by 25 per cont., and the "three-section by 16 per cent." This is about as convincing as to say that after cighteon years, during which his weight has increased from seven to fourteen stone, the Board proposes to charge, a man of thirty only ja ha 'penny more for carrying him a' mile. It is not important that the fareß haye increased 25 per cent, in eighteen years, but it is important that they have'increased 25. per cent, during the last eighteen days. The Board's problem is to make thov system pay better' this year than' it did last, year, whether ■jva'ges are higher or lower, and whether newspapers cost one hundred or five hundred per cent, more than they did before the Great War. If the result of higher charges is a far more than proportionate fall in business, .to put up prices is bad business in practice whatever justification it may have morallyj The charge against the Board is'not that it proposes to levy unjust charges, or even charges involving hardship, but that its only proposal for meeting a loss is one that a large number of people may regard as a reason (good or bad) for ceasing to .do business -with it. If much of the criticism that has been made has boen destructive and foolish, the serious critics of the Board have almost without exception suggested" that expensive and clumsy methods of running the system have had more to do with the financial position than the high cost of wages and the low cost of fares. Instead of meeting this, which after all he must know to be. the real charge, the Chairman either attempts to laugh the critic out of countenance, as ■he does, e.g., in the matter of stopping places, or ho makes such utterly ridiculous statements as that concession tickets'are not made readily' accessible and transferable because when that was the custom they were used by picnickers. Not many of us go picnicking every day in the week, and if we' did, it would'be to the Board's obvious interest to offer us better travelling terms than could be offered by its rivals. It does not appear that the Board has learnt much from the opposition its policy has aroused but that tracks should be renewed in concrete.