HORSES IN CITY TRAFFIC

Evening Post, Volume CXXI, Issue 23, 28 January 1936, Page 4

HORSES IN CITY TRAFFIC

OBJECTIONS TO ELIMINATION

Recent references by the British Minister of Transport to the possibility of "eliminating" horse traffic from the central areas of larger cities were not received with universal approval, notes the "Manchester Guardian." The idea of the horse as outlaw from city streets may have appealed to some road-users, but it was not accepted at all as a certain way of reducing traffic congestion. And in essence the question is not one of sentiment or personal preferences, and still less one of indignation at the supposed obstruction caused by one sort of wheeled traffic. If the working horse can hold its own as an economic proposition it is entitled to remain on the roads, and a little pamphlet on "Horses for Commercial Transport," just issued by the National Horse Association of Great Britain, dwells in quite a mat-ter-of-fact way on the damage that would follow any legislative discouragement of horse traffic. "The short haul in towns is peculiarly the province of the horse"; it is not conjecture but actual fact that within a radius of four to six miles, and on a basis of twenty miles a day, haulage by horse is cheaper than haulage by motor. The scope for haulage of that kind, with its frequent' halts, may not be enormous, but if the scope exists why should it not be covered in the most economical way? Interfere with it, and you do more than interfere with the horses themselves, of which it is reckoned that there are at least 200.000 in industrial use in Britain. Fodder for that number of working horses accounts for little short of £10,000,000 worth of agricultural produce in a year; cut down the number of draught horses and you hit not only the farmer who breeds them but the farmer who grows the food for them. And it is said that if horses were barred in Liverpool there are in that city alone something like 5000 carters whose livelihood would be gone. If the working horse cannot pay its way, then the working horse must and will vanish, and irrespective of hardship to agriculture or carters. But if the working horse continues to pay its way, then it is exceedingly difficult, the "Guardian" concludes, to make out any just case for. restricting the scope that remains to it.