ELECTRIC TRAMS.

Lyttelton Times, Volume CXVI, Issue 16807, 17 March 1915, Page 10

ELECTRIC TRAMS.

NEW GOVERNMENT REGULATIONS. [Pee Press Association.] WELLINGTON, March 16. New regulations for the control of the various electric tramways throughout the Dominion have been drawn up by the Public Works Department. The principal regulation relates to overcrowding. It binds the authorities down to carry only a given number of passengers in each oar, the number to be given L for each type of car. This is a m.»>«er which will give most of the municipal councils some concern. If the regulation as submitted ib insisted upon, Wellington will have to increase the number of cars at once, and more plant will have to be installed at the power-house. Wellington city at present has car bodies completed, but is unable to put them on the track as there are no wheels available. The contractors who supply undertrucks and motors do not as a rule provide wheels. Hitherto these have been turned out in quite a wholesale way by Krupps, but that source of supply has now gone. As the regulations as drafted would make it imperative to increase, the number of cars (in order to reasonably copo with traffic) .it can be seen that while extra cars could be provided they would be wheelless. A fine not exceeding £2O is provided for the offence of carrying a greater number of passengers than is specified in the regulations. Another proposal is that gangways should be provided between all cars forming part of a train of cars, as in a case in which an electric car draws one or more trailers. This particularly affects Christchurch, where, it is pointed out, there are many more curves in the tramway line than there are in a similar mileage of railway line, and the curves are of a much smaller radius. The gangways simply sweep the ends of cars when rounding, a curve and would be very dangerous to the travelling public without providing any 'Treater margin of safety for conductors.