TRAMWAY FEEDERS.

New Zealand Herald, Volume LXIII, Issue 19510, 14 December 1926, Page 12

TRAMWAY FEEDERS.

When the city tramways department applied yesterday for a licence to run an omnibus service from the Great South Road terminus to Ellerslie and Panmure, and when the council as No. 1 Licensing Authority declined the proposal, there was not much doubt which body best interpreted the spirit behind the regulations. It is quite apparent from the reported proceedings that the department was not only proposing to enter territory where it had not been asked to go, it was also seeking to go where it was not wanted. The action of the Ellerslie Town Board in objecting should have been conclusive even if there had been no other case made against giving the licence. The regulations, surely, were naver intended as authority for a tramway system to extend its radius of operation indefinitely by means of motor omnibuses, and to exclude all rivals from competing in any field it claimed. The case for regulation, especially for the twopenny penal fare along tramway routes, was almost entirely based on the heavy capital commitments of tracks, overhead equipment and other apparatus essential to the rail system. The same privileges cannot be claimed where the owners of these fixed assets propose to go further afield) with motor vehicles. The distance beyond a tramway terminus to J which protection should extend is indicated by the Act when it makes a quarter of a, mile beyond it the!

radius in which the penal fare may be made operative. The corollary surely is that in areas further afield other transport may be provided freely, serving the people living at the greater distance and refraining from competing with the trains when the terminus is reached. As was said when the regulations fust came into force, it is not the business of the tramways department to provide transport for places so far afield as Panmure and similar districts. Let it serve its own population; to the fullest extent possible and leave private enterprise to cater for the outsider. Therefore the Licensing Authority judged rightly when it declined to grant the application.