A MONOPOLIST'S DUTY
Suburbs served by corporation motor-bus services, or desiring such services, are complaining loudly. An echo of their complaints was heard at the meeting of the Civic League Council last week, when various speakers criticised the City Council's methods in control of its transport monopoly. It was even said that the general manager of the Tramways Department was opposed to bus services and had set out to "squash" them. We cannot endorse such personal attacks upon motives, but it does appear that the council's effort to fit buses into the transport system is not as whole-hearted as it might be. The corporation has a practical monopoly of passenger transport services (by virtue of its ownership of tramways and buses and its authority to grant or withhold licences to private buses). The usefulness of the bus cannot, therefore, Jje fully Lestcd by private enterprise. We do not hold that such a monopoly is necessarily wrong or against the public interest. Indeed, an efficient monopoly under public control is, theoretically, the best means of assuring economical
service. The weakness of the theory lies in the fact that monopoly often leads to unsatisfactory service and lack of enterprise in practice. In the end, the people are driven to demand competition, though this may result in duplication and waste. It is the duty of the public authority to which a monopoly has been granted to prove that it can develop its services with as great* enterprise as would be displayed by a private undertaking under the spur of competition. We are not satisfied that the council is doing this in its bus transport experiments. It is concluding too easily that the bus is expensive and unsuitable, and is not approaching the task with a determination' to be successful. Its system of accounting, as we have previously pointed out, is unfair to the buses at the start. Unless a different attitude is adopted the protests against the monopoly will grow in volume.
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Bibliographic details
Evening Post, Volume CX, Issue 42, 18 August 1930, Page 8
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329A MONOPOLIST'S DUTY Evening Post, Volume CX, Issue 42, 18 August 1930, Page 8
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