TRAMWAY SERVICES.

New Zealand Herald, Volume LX, Issue 18388, 2 May 1923, Page 8

TRAMWAY SERVICES.

','•, The latest C change in ! = the running of I the. tramway services is difficult to understand. Formerly the destination sighs of cars were changed in t the' vicinity of the ■ "Wellesley Street intersection, and as the traffic: expanded beyond the capacity of the services, the crowd of waiting passengers moved from J the lower to the upper part of Queen Street. Nearly two years sago, : the Council adopted the plan of confining the loading ;of ; cars during rush hours to the Post Office block. It is doubtful whether the failure of that experiment was not due to faulty administration rather than to inherent defects. In any event, it has been tacitly abandoned, the loading of cars has become a; test of athletic ability/ and skill in recognising the identity of cars, and the result is ; general confusion. V Now the outward signs are to be changed as the: cars'.- reach the outskirts of the business area. /This will probably relieve the exasperation caused by the J recent practice, but. it must prove a fresh cause of dissatisfaction. The effect will inevitably be to draw the rush hour crowds toward the points where signs are changed, to waste time in unnecessary journeying to the foot of Queen Street. The extra fares will no doubt benefit the tramways account, but will the public be satisfied to pay for the department's lack of an efiicient loading system? For a long time public opinion has been impressed by the futility of running most of the cars into the Post Office block, : and the soundness , of this view has been conceded by the management, for on -December 1, 1921, changes in the running of certain services were made '■ as "an instalment of the circular route system." Seventeen months have passed without any development of that policy, though its > general application— the diversion of all inward cars to the "side" routes and their departure via Queen Street—would seem to remove the difficulty in regard to sign-changing, obviate the waste of time in the Post Office block, and by distributing the loading among the natural points of, congregation in Queen Street, minimise the inconvenience and confusion which are daily experienced. To a certain extent, the congestion is due to the inadequacy of the car equipment, and this will be only temporarily relieved by the addition of the cars now building. But the service is also handicapped by inefficiency in the running of the cars, of which the Post Office section is a. typical illustration, while public co-operation, for which official requests have occasionally been made, is prevented by the inadequacy of attempts to make the system intelligible to the public, for instance, by the absence of route signs at intersections, and the distribution of cars serving the same districts between different routes. With the growth of population and the extension of the services, these deficiencies must be remedied or the result will be hopeless confusion. It is disappointing that after nearly four years of municipal management, the service is to revert to a practice that was discredited before the change in control.