TRAM TROUBLES.

Free Lance, Volume XIV, Issue 723, 9 May 1914, Page 6

TRAM TROUBLES.

Why We Must Still Hang on Straps. THE "Evening Post" recently published a plainly inspired explanation of an excuse for the obviously unsatisfactory conditions under which the Wellington trams are now being run. We are assured that strap-hanging must go on for a long time yet. Mr. Davey is blamed; naturally, when: you have obviously, no excuse, any faked excuse is better than no attempt at fake. Mr. Davey's action was merely humane. Conductors, in an occasionally rough and bitter were riding on dangerous footboards, exposed to all weathers; and if Mr. Davey had taken no decisive action, they would be riding on dangerous footboards still. When a tramway-sys-tem cannot keep up with the demands of its public, the fault lies with the tramways management. What a private company in. Auckland can do, a municipal body in Wellington can do, for the private company is hampered by many disabilities the municipal body does not share. By hook or by crook, Wellington must have 'new rolling-stock, and must have it soon. The present conditions are always inconvenient, and sometimes they are indecent. The system of running Seatoun and Miramar cars with minimum fares to Kilbirnie only is absurd, since those are just the cars the Kilbirnie people rush. Seatoun . and Miramar ladies are frequently unable to get aboard a Seatoun or Miramar car full of Kilbirnie folk, though a Kilbirnie car may be running almost empty just behind. These causes of everyday dissatisfaction and inconvenience must be remedied.