ABOUT MOTOR BUSSES.

Manawatu Times, Volume XLIII, Issue 14206, 3 September 1919, Page 4

ABOUT MOTOR BUSSES.

Engineers say that the cheapest form of traction power is electricity. The dearest form of.' traction power is metal moved by horses, a la Palmerston North Borough Council. Talk about cruelty to animals! It takes three horses and one man to drag a load of gravel out of the river-bed, thou along the street* into the town. In the process of dragging the gravel to patch the streets they tear up the roads, and this goes on day after day, week after week, year after year. Wear and tear on men, horses, carts, roads. When electricity conies all that, will bo changed. If! If? If? If the Palmerston Borough Council looks well ahead and put in a plant capable of dealing with the gravel question once and for all. In the immediate future we shall require thousands upon thousands upon thousands of yards of gravel for houses, roads, footpaths, all kinds of things. What’s the matter with a concrete road all the way up from the river, fed from a depot supplied by an electric light line laid along the shingle deposit in such a way that it can be shifted to wherever it is wanted! With a concrete road up from this riverside depot electric lorries could be supplied from an overhead and dump their loads just wherever they were wanted in any part of the town —always provided that instead of wasting our money on rails and overheads, we laid dowm concrete roads along all the principal routes in the town! Then when we had concrete roads we could buy six, seven, eight or ten electric 'busses, smooth, noiseless and fast — run to serve the whole of the people the whole of the time. What does the manager of the hendon County Council overhead tramways have to say! listen; “People prefer to use a ’bus oven when the fare is more, because the ’bus is more flexible and will take passengers to the exact point they want to go.’’ Ho makes this point to explain how it is that even with a huge population to draw upon the overhead tramways are a losing proposition —in competition with motor‘busses!