BUSES AND PETROL TAX

Evening Post, Volume CX, Issue 36, 11 August 1930, Page 8

BUSES AND PETROL TAX

(To tho Editor.) Sir,—The Mayor of Eastbourne ha*, brought up the subject of the petrol tax and pus fares, pointing out that the extra burden will have to be passed on to the bus users, which, of course, Means an increase in'charges. Eartboinoe has been a somewhat unhappy district in regard to transport,.the main difficulty being,.of course, that it ia far distant and with a population too email" to nwlce a really. cheap transport service self supporting. Nobody can complain justly of the principle of the road iiger paying for the road, particularly in the cane of Eastbourne, where the people were already possessed of a ferry eerviee requiring all the support it could get to keep it going. Eastbourne has to carry that service as a burden on its rates, , It is just a case of the railways on a-small scale, running: at a loss because necessary to the district, " L . Mr. Jones speaks of a decrease m the heavy transport fees, Now, Sir, I desire to point out tha"t the heavy transport fee ia actually the only real eoatributtop the Eastbourne bus ; service makes to any portion of the roads it uses, Under the present allocation of highways fund the contribution from this source is infinitesimal, practically the money being carried off into the country to build highways for other people. All the cities and boroughs suffer this way, and will continue to su[fer until the people wake up to the fart that motor operators do not carry the burden of the highways but that they themselves do so. They pay heavily through costs passed on to them to build roads from which they derive bo benefit, and at the same timo through rates they. pay for the roads that do matter to them. The Eastbourne buses are in the same position as all other commercial traffic in. Wellington; they are bearing charges— and must pass these charges 'qjt—yfeldingj thousands and thousands of pounds, which goes off into the country, uiainfy to enable a few service cars and some lorries to increase the burden further by bringing the railways on to the Consolidated Fund. A worse feature still, Sir, is the fact that none of our highways, not even the highway to Eastbourne, is really capable of carrying heavy traffic, and few of them, the Hutt road includedi Sir, are going to stand up to the strain,^-! am,' etc., ■ BUSES.