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Combating the Road Carrier.

Electrification of city and suburban routes appears a sure means of combating the competition of the road carrier in and around the larger centres of population. Outside the city traffic zones the most useful move that can at present be made by the railways would seem to be the putting into service of extensive road transport fleets of their own for both passenger and freight movement. The steps which should be taken by the railway to meet road competition are the subject of constant review at Home, and in this connection interest is attached to a paper recently read before an audience of railwaymen by Mr. P. A. Harverson, Assistant Passenger Manager of the L. & N. E. Railway.

Pointing out that in the last ten years four hundred road transport undertakings in Britain had grown to 3,000, and the number of motor omnibuses in service from 4,000 to 23,000, Mr. Harverson emphasised the need for the railways themselves embarking upon road motor services. In the North Eastern Area of the L. & N. E. Railway a record had been kept of bus mileages each week on January 1st and July 1st each year since 1925. This mileage is now 120 per cent. greater than it was two and a half years ago. Taking the receipts as one shilling per mile and the average fare as threepence-halfpenny, an estimate was obtained of no less than 250 million passenger journeys. This represented nearly seven times as many as the passenger journeys originating in the same district on the railway. It would be impossible for railways to capture a traffic of these dimensions, but they must not try to strangle it. They should go out for a share of it, and by the application of road methods, and not railway methods, to their bus problems, earn from seven to ten per cent. on their capital, in the same way as was done by private motor bus companies.

In summing up, Mr. Harverson expressed the view that railways should make a bold use of road transport. Under the scheme of co-ordination visualised, the bus station would be the railway station, better provision would be made for luggage, and the buses would do all that they did to-day in passing through the busy centres of the town before journeying out to the suburbs and country districts. As time went on railways would probably find it expedient to close many of their wayside stations, except for full wagon loads of goods. As ordinary fares would be at the same rate, the rail and road services would be interchangeable where a choice was available. The buses would carry the short-distance passenger moving from, say, ten to twenty miles, and the railways would cater for longer journeys.