CARS FOR THE MILLION.

Poverty Bay Herald, Volume XXXX, Issue 13138, 26 July 1913, Page 9

CARS FOR THE MILLION.

MAY TIME AND THE MOTOR 'BUS. THE HAPPY LONDONER. LONDON, May 6. "May time in the country. Take this 'bus." So runs the advertisement on hundreds of London motor 'buses. You accept the advice, board the 'bus in the Strand or at Piccadilly Circus, or almost anywhere in the main thoroughfares, and in half an hour the trees and meadows are in sight, and in less than an hour you are running along country Janes, and making dust in the narrow, winding streets of the villages. It is popular to speak' of the artificial life which great cities and mechanism are forcing upon us; but, thanks to improved facilities of travel, and especially to the motor 'bus, the Londoner lives closer to Nature than his predecessor for a century past. The motor 'bus is the poor man's motor car. . It is a little rougher and not so fast, but it is cheaper and) more sociable. Each year, too, it is improved almost oat of recognition, chiefly in the direction, of smooth running and noiselessness. You do your 30 or 40 miles in London and the country lanes, and return in the evening not nearly so tired as you would after driving the same distance in a buggy over average Australian roads. -Poets may complain at this invasion of the . May countryside by thousands of trippers who travel in vast red and blue vehicles. But those who protest may take to the footpaths across the fields, or journey out beyond the 20-mile radius. Within 20 miles of London the country fairly belongs to the Londoner. EXTENDING THE HOLIDAY ZONE. In the eighteenth century, and well into the nineteenth, the Londoner was in the open country before he reached 'Hampstead. Keats caught his deathchill coaching up to his home in Hampstead; his pretty white house is still standing, with the old tree under which he wrote many of his poems. It was on the heath that he listened to the nightingale. The heath is still wild and beautiful, except on bank holidays and Sundays, although each season the builr. der encroaches upon the surrounding fields, which were until a few .years ago the greatest attraction ' of the famous domain. In Garrick's time, "The Old Bull and Bush" was a famous hostelry, to which the wits of the age coached on Sundays. • "The Spaniards," a mile away, was a favorite resort of Dickens, and near by is the stately, old house to which Chatham retired, and exaggerated his ailments, and refused audience to his colleagues upon even the most pressing affairs of the nation. Late in the Victorian era, when%Hampstead had been handed over to the hdliday crowd and the suburban dweller, the fashionable Londoners, riding . behind \ swift teams, drove out for lunch to Richmond and a dozen other places lying within 20 miles of Westminster, and believed themselves safe from the cheap noises of the multitude. • v The tube now runs up to Hampstead, and "The Old Bull and Bush'-', and "The Spaniards" are the gathering grounds of the coster. You can reach theni for a threepenny fare, travelling all the while in electric light. For sixpence you can go by motor 'bus to. tne • fashionable naunts of the late Victorians. Many changes have been worked. Hotels within .20 miles of London which were noted for their lunches. and dinners and wines are no\r become mere crowded pothouses; the portly English waiters who studied the palates of their guests and served . famous, oJd ales . and special wines, and the best in game and the: roast beef, of the nation, are replaced by' hustling, .perspiring, pale-faced youths who rush out great quantities of cheap beer and "teas" to the clerk and the shop assistant. Fashion has. gone still further afield, and, thanks to the motor car, lunchesUand takes tea at great hotels at Brighton and other places lying from 50 to 100 miles from London; The holiday zone widens; the Londoner as his city grows ' larger, and its atmosphere l^omesiirore' polluted, has » cheap and easy escape. Human ingenuity is finding means to make it possible for large city communities to live Without physical and moral degeneration. When you see on every thoroughfare leading to the country the processions of great ■ painted motor 'buses, all crowded with excited passengers, you become more hopeful about the future of the industrial millions who are forced to live hr crowded town tenements: Given enough, motor 'buses, London's deathrate, already lower / than that of any other large city, will fall still lower, and her citizens, rich and poor alike, may live down the reproach that they are so ignorant of the animal and bird and plant life of their wonderful countryside. •■' •; THE GALLANT COCKNEY. Last Sunday I went by,, motor 'bus to Harrow Weald, and in less than an hour's travel from Marble Arch was immersed in a thicket almost as wild and beautiful as an untrodden forest. Only the occasional sound of a motor horn in the distance intruded to tell of London 15 or 20 miles away. Deserting the thicket, I chanced: on, , to a charming village, where I found: a tiny inn which sold delicious cold draught cider at fc'Hree halfpence a large glass, fresh eggs at a shilling a dozen, and a whole armful of flowers from a rambling old garden for a shilling— tulips and peonies, wallflowers, and columbines, and many more.. Then to drink more "cider and to lie in tb.o long meadow /grass (soon to be ready for. the mowers) to take deep breaths of the clover, and to pluck the long-stemmed buttercups. A cottager told me that his Jittle old home of redbrick,, low-walled, and two-storeyed, and surrounded by a spacious flower and vegetable garden, costs him. only £5 a year. Seen on this bright May day it seemed the delightfullest and cheapest little home in the world, and I wondered, as the colonial always- does in May, how English emigration began and 1 why it continues. . ' You motor home in the long evening, a tired -but very happy throng on top of your swift red ; bus, richly laden with the spoils of the spring. And your fel-low-passenger tells of other trips equally good to St. Albans or to Burnhan Woods or Bushy Park ; trips in short to any of the Home -counties, • and all to be taken for a few pence either way. And safe on your 'bus top and' careless about the consumption of petrol and the lurking police traps, you are not covetous of the cars which go speeding by. You marvel each season at the change in the traffic. The feature of the roads is not now the large and- sumptuously appointed car, but the smaller motor vehicle which is the property of the relatively poor. On any Sunday you see close to London thousands of side basket cars, not infrequently containing man and wife and a couple of children. "They bustle along at from 20 to 40 miles an hour, threading the traffic with a fine daring which shows that,the young Londoner is brimful of courage and dash. And yet the vehicle as a whole is apparently so frail that the confidence of the young wife, with her children seatjed in the "toe" of the trailer, appears to be that of ignorance. .But accidents are rare. Then the cheap road-car, running in price from £100 to £200, is rapidly advancing in favor. Half the clerks and shop assistants) and mechanics in London aspire to a motor vehicle of sorts. COST OF RUNNING. The motor 'bus more than anything, else is bringing the country within^ Teach of the multitude in the cities. Their chief attraction is that they start from everywhere ; you have not first to travel to railway stations; there is no changing along the route; you go practically from your door to your rural destination. Already cheap, the motor bus promises to become cneaper. The actual cost of running the 'buses owned by one "London company is as follows: —

These vehicles carry 34 passengers, and average about 100 miles a d&y. They cost £760 to build, or, counting the capital expended on sheds and other plant, about £1000. To pay 5 per uent. for the money invested in them the 'bu» has to earn 9.18d a mile. Obviously with anything like traffic on the routes, this assures cheap fares for the public. The motor 'bus running fully loaded along a country lane 20 miles trom London is one of the most pleasing and significant sights of this generation.— (Sydney Telegraph correspondent.)

Pence per Omnibus mile. Petrol '•» 1-48 Tyres 120 Lubricants iO Drivers ... ... *-3° Conductors ... 65 Cleaning ... ... 34 Sundry running expenses ... -38 Rolling stock repairs ... ... -70 Insurance ••• 25 Management and salaries of operating staff 75 Administration and general expenses ; «• .90 Total "» wi wi t.03 j »