TRAMS NOT OUT OF DATE

Poverty Bay Herald, Volume LIV, Issue 16623, 16 April 1928, Page 5

TRAMS NOT OUT OF DATE

A LONDONER'S OPINION A striking defence of trams was made at a session of the Public Works, Roads and Transport Congress in London by Mr. 11. Marsh, of the Groat Western Railway, who was speaking on "Present Day Implications of Local Ownership of Transport Undertakings." Mr. Marsh urged the need of co-ordination between transport undertakings as a means of avoiding waste, and improving and cheapening services. He did not agree with the oftrepeated suggestion that tramways should be scrapped in favor of motor buses. • Tramways, in the main, continued to pay their way, and from the standpoint of efficiency.of service a really satisfactory substitute had yet to be evolved. ' "In the large cities of Germany, motor omnibus services are the exception rather than the rule. In Fiance. Holland and Belgium there has in general been no sort of popular demand for the abandonment of trams in favor of buses. In America, tho consensus of opinion is that the bus cannot replace the electric tramway for ordinary city purposes, while, some traffic, authorities in Australia claim that tramways, far from being out of date, arc actually making rapid progress. Suggesting the substitution of cutthroat competition by a progressive policy of co-ordination, Mr. Marsh: said "municipal and private operators alike should fully appreciate, thatj the functions of trams and buses were! eminently complementary rather than: competitive. There was, he thought, too much talk of "dying trams." The chairman (Mr. Edward Willis, president of the Institute of Municipal and County Engineers) said tramway services w-ere undoubtedly of considerable utility during a London fog.