Tramways Finance.

Press, Volume LXI, Issue 18463, 18 August 1925, Page 8

Tramways Finance.

The General Manager of the tramways informs us, apropos of his lecture to the W.E.A. which we reported yesterday, that the Tramways Board has not discussed the question of any further increase in fares. But it seems to us that the Board will not be able long to delay giving some further consideration to its finances. The Manager mentioned in his address that the Board had been compelled, by growing costs, to raise fares slightly, and that the cost of power would soon be increased by £7OOO a year. Ho wondered, he said, what would happen if, as a consequence, the Board was compelled to raise fares again. Two things, we should say, are certain. The public would protest very strongly, thpugh this would perhaps not much matter if the increases were made with judgment; and the public would use the trams less, which would matter a great deal. The position of the tramways administration is really very strange. It has, as yet, no serious competitor of its own kind. (We do not count as painful competition the cycle and the motor-car, of which a transport organisation cannot reasonably complain unless we allow it the right to complain of that other competitor, Shanks's pony.) It has had the same opportunity to look ahead as other businesses have had —better opportunities, indeed, since the factors of its problems have always been better visible and freer from unsuspected and sudden complications than most of the problems which capable business men meet and overcome without serious hurt. It has liberties and privileges denied to the ordinary trader. It has had years of freedom to make financial experiments. It lias been free to raise fares and to lower fares; and it has done both, and has lost money both ways. It has been in business nearly 20 years, and it ought to-day to be a very prosperous concern. That it is not prospering, but is on the contrary drifting helplessly towards dependence upon subsidies from the rates, means that it has made rather poor use of its time. And unfortunately the attitude of the Board and it.s executive officers towards criticism does not greatly encourage the hope that better things arc to come.