CROWDED TRAMS

Evening Post, Volume CXXX, Issue 4, 4 July 1940, Page 10

CROWDED TRAMS

(To the Editor.)

Sir,— l' desire to draw the attention of the public and the tramways department to the unreasonable overcrowding on the Island Bay trams at rush hours. One a recent evening at 5.40 I waited at Taranaki Street and let three Island B&y trams pass fully loaded and overcrowded. I boarded the fourth car, and there were fifteen men standing on the rear platform and many more people standing inside the car. There was not even one strap on the platform from which to gain support. The chairman of the tramways committee and the officers should travel daily on the Island Bay trams, leaving Courtenay Place from 5.40 to 5.55 p.m., for one month, and then sit in committee daily, for a month until they have evolved a simple scheme to improve the service. Owing to petrol restrictions, there are many more men travelling home on the trams, hence the further need for better service. I anticipated a better service since the closing of the Exhibition, but there is no satisfying nourishment in hope. It is doubtless difficult to dispatch more trams through Willis Street at rush hours. Is it not time that the Lambton Quay-Willis Street-Manners Street fetish was abandoned, or must we wait twenty years for a radical improvement. I suggest that the tram rails be lifted in Jervois Quay -and relaid in Victoria Street to Wakefield Street, and all Island Bay trams take this route at rush hours, with a minimum fare of three sections. Possibly one or two other suburbs would also prefer this route and relieve the traffic in Willis and Manners. Streets. —I am, etc..

H. M. PALMER,