TRAMWAY PROBLEM

Dominion, Volume 34, Issue 119, 13 February 1941, Page 5

TRAMWAY PROBLEM

Fare For Long-Distance Passengers

HIGHER WORKING COSTS When working charges were moderate it was possible to make tramway fares over long distances very cheap. This encouraged people to secure sections and build homes in the outlying suburbs of the chief cities of the Dominion, and for many years such commuters have enjoyed very low charges on concession tickets over the longer journeys. But this sort of thing has its limitations under the new order, .brought about by increases in wages and working costs generally.

In a. recent memorandum on the subject, the manager of the Wellington tramways department, Mr. M. Cable, said that many of the extensive housing schemes carried out in Great Britain during recent years had been located five and sometimes six miles out from the business centres of cities, with the result that the problem of conveying people to and from their work at fares commensurate with their earnings had presented difficulties for the authorities, whose fares were almost universally based on the sectional principal (as is the case, in Wellington). “The problem of providing adequate service to residents in outlying districts at relatively low fares has,” said Mr. Cable, “given authorities in the Dominion responsible for city passenger transport much concern since the substantial rise in operating expenses following the introduction of the shorter working week a few years ago. The building of homes in the outlying suburban areas, where building sites have been procurable at attractive rates, and, more recently, the operation of the State housing Department, have created an increasing demand for outlying transit facilities. “When electric tramways were introduced into the Dominion,” said Mr. Cable, “the fare system was based upon the stage or sectional system, which had been adopted long before the advent of the motor vehicle, and at a time when it was customary for people to live as near as possible to the centre of the town. At a later date, following the rapid extension of the tramways in the main Dominion centres, concessions increasing according to the number of sections travelled were introduced by the majority of the undertakings in order to develop traffic to meet the cost of providing those extensions.

“With the high operating cost now prevailing,” continued Mr. Cable, “the concession rates for long-distance riders are in most instances insufficient to meet operating costs, and any further loading of the fares paid by short distance riders to cover the loss in maintaining the long distance services, would undoubtedly lead to a reduction in the short distance traffic. On the Wellington system, for instance, a passenger can travel over four sections at a concession rate of nine-tenths of a penny a section, whereas the concession rate for the one-section rider is lid., which is rather more than 50 per cent, higher. In face of high operating costa the granting of requests for additional outlying services at rates below cost is likely to jeopardize the financial position of the undertakings concerned.”