OVERCROWDED TRAMS

Evening Post, Volume CXXXII, Issue 89, 11 October 1941, Page 8

OVERCROWDED TRAMS

(To the Editor.)

Sir,—Shortly after 4.30 on Wednesday afternoon I boarded a Miramar tram. Before it reached Manners Street the conductor was refusing intending passengers, which means that the tram was already packed to suffocation. Seated in the rear compartment where I stood were several passengers with one-section tickets. They retained their seats until alighting, notwithstanding that elderly women were strap-hanging with "yellow" tickets in their hands. At Hataitai about, a dozen people held the tram up while they fo,ught their way off, Immediately in front of us was h Hataitai tram practically empty.

When I left the tram at Miramar Avenue over 30 people were still standing. My wife, who could not avoid being in town, was on a tram just behind me and had to make the whole journey standing on the rear platform. The council has trams in the sheds but we are told there are no crews to man them. Even if we accept this position I cannot see that we should longer tolerate consistent over-crowd-ing when other remedial measures are available. It is high time the council reverted to, "minimum fare" trams. The council itself would probably gain nothing from this measure, nor would it lose anything, but the peak load would be more evenly distributed by encouraging short-distance passengers to use their own tram service instead of overcrowding into long-distance trams which will be packed by their legitimate passengers before leaving town.—l am, etc.,

SARDINE,