TRAMWAY CONVERSION.

New Zealand Herald, Volume XXXIV, Issue 10409, 6 April 1897, Page 4

TRAMWAY CONVERSION.

It may reasonably be concluded that the project for some time before the public mind for the conversion of our horse-traction tramways into a system with electric motive power—to use a vernacular expression—is "08." The suggestion, therefore, of a correspondent in yesterday's Herald, that we ought to know the probable actual cost of such a conversion, is a natural one. Indeed, we might go so far as saying that this should have been the initial step before the City Council or the public was called to consider whether the proposals of a syndicate should or should not be accepted. It may seem at first sight that it is no concern of ours how much capital, nominal or actual, a syndicate or a company might sink in promoting or completing the scheme. All we want is that the work should be done, and the traffic should be conducted at so much per fare. But it might in the outcome be a matter of very considerable concern ; for if in one way or another by commissions, promoters' shares, transference of interests, watering of stocks, and the other hundred and one ways by which company projects are commonly made to go, a capital of say £150,000 or £200,000 is saddled on the tramways, it stands to reason that the company or syndicate could not afford to give such reduction of fares from time to time as might be achievable if the total capital involved had been but £40,000 or £50,000. For example, a dividend on £150,000 might necessitate a 3d fare, whereas a similar dividend on £50,000 might he equally met by Id fare, while the payment of the dividend would surely bfe helped by the enormously increased traffic which the Id fare would produce, It is obvious then that it is of some concern, and of very substantial concern, to the citizens and the travelling public that the financial obligations of the company or other body manipulating the traffic should be the smallest possible that might be necessary for constructing the work. In these circumstances it appears to be of the very first importance that the Council, now that it is free from any engagements, should take the very best means at its disposal to find out what would be the actual cost of converting our present tramway lines into an electric traction service. Our correspondent give 3 an illustration that is singularly apropos of our circumstances, for the mileage and conditions of the Aix-la-Chapelle tramway system cited by him are as near as may be identical with.those which we require for Auckland. There tfie mileage was fifteen and a-half miles, of which a portion had to be made and railed at a cost of £15,000. Assuming our present tramways to cover, say five or six miles, a service through Parnell and nil extension to Onehunga, as contemplated, in the recent proposals, would give' us a mileage about the same as that of the tramways at Aix-la-Chapelty Well, what do we find the. cost was there? There were £15,000 expended in jails and laying over new ground ; on standards wire and feeding towere on route, for overhead, system, ; -: ; ■ ■... ' ■■■.■'■

over the whole fifteen and a-half miles there was expended a sum of £10,000 • for 34 ne.w electric motor cars, £18*250 ■ for miscellaneous extras, £1750: ma'kina a total of £45,000, and if we add, sal £5000 for steam power, we have the round sum of £50,000 for the conversion of those tramways from horse to electric traction over a mileage of fifteen and a-half miles. In a rough conjectural estimate like this we need not take into account the somewhat increased cost incidental to having the work done in the tolohy, nor yet a number of things of which we know nothing, as, for example, what length of new tramway was made for the £15,000. We have the one fact that 15i miles of tramway were made or converted and set aworking with electric motive power, for, say £50000 Now, assuming that we started in a modest way, as becomes the city of Auckland, and merely converted oup five miles or so of existing tramway as an experiment to see how far the scheme would answer; and eliminating the £15,000 for new tramway, we take* the cost of standards, wires, and feeding-towers at one-third, for onethird the mileage— £3333 ; seven new electric motor ears at £537 a piece£37s9; miscellaneous extras, £350 • or a total of £7442 for converting our existing tramways into tramways with all the appliances for electric traction. The cost of steam power for generating the electricity is to be added to this, but the sum total looks h> dicrously small by the side of the extravagant illusions under which we have been accustomed to contemplate the advantages of electric traction, 01 course experts could point to lots of things we want which they did not have at Aix-la-Chapelle; we should have the lines concreted between the rails, in fact we might have the whole, roadway concreted for the matter oj that, or laid in wooden cubes—if w £ had the money. We might take up all the rails and lay down beautiful steel rails in their stead, and thero is no end of the improvements wo might make, ' But for people of modest ambitions like the people of Auckland the present ■ rails are good enough for the purpose' they are exactly the same as those 0! all electric tramways with which we happen to be acquainted, and when they are ground down we can have new ones of the best Bessemer. Anyway the bare statement of the actual cost at which horse traction has been converted into electric traction should open the eyes of the Council and thj citizens, whether the future proposals in this direction may be connected with municipal action, or with the enterprise of syndicates: and the people of Auckland should keep their eyes fixed on the possibility of pennj fares for whole distance rides instead of the conventional threepence. Under any and every circumstance we unhesitatingly say that the Council should have a careful estimate formed or found as to the real cost of conversion befor* any further action is taken or encouraged in the direction of putting the tramways under electric traction..