EASTBOURNE FERRIES

Evening Post, Volume CXXV, Issue 107, 9 May 1938, Page 8

EASTBOURNE FERRIES

"I wish to draw attention before it is too late (writes "Scylla") to the danger that lies ahead of the people of Eastbourne unless they obtain assurances from all candidates for election to the council and Mayoralty that there will be no interference with the ferry service. There is a ratepayers', and a businessmen's association here and it is up to these guardians of the common interest, if individuals are backward in pressing the point, to get a full and unequivocal statement from candidates as to what their future intentions are in regard to the ferries. If the people return them without any statement of- their ferry policy, then they will wake up one day to find that* the ferries are no more. We have been regaled at regular intervals with statements of the ferry losses and dismal pronouncements as to the future of the service. . . . These ferries are part jot Eastbourne; the sociable atmosphere travel on them engenders is a big factor in the community life of the eastern bays. They may lose money as the result of increased costs, but they certainly get the people away to their work expeditiously in the mornings and fetch them home at night without the crush that there is with bus travel. We all know- the fancy notions there are to replace the j ferries with buses, but it has ap-i parently been forgotten that half of! our rate is a ferry rate and that this ] will still remain while further huge' loans are floated to provide enough buses to take away and bring back at the peak periods the 300 to 500 persons that one ferry will accommodate comfortably. And each bus must have a driver. What will the fleet of buses and staff be doing in between times. They would certainly not be kept occupied, except at fine weekends, even if the whole population of East- | bourne kept going into Wellington and back again just for the ride."