Tramways, Motor-buses, etc. 467 



perfect a motor-omnibus, or any other alternative service, that 

 the electric tramway will not only have a powerful competitor 

 but be largely superseded, the position of the municipalities 

 which first sought to exclude or to exploit private enterprise 

 and then invested large sums in speculative tramway 

 undertakings of their own will be sufficiently serious. 



While, on the one hand, certain local authorities which have 

 no municipal tramways are now establishing municipal motor- 

 omnibuses showing in this practical manner their own view 

 of the respective claims of the two systems others, with the 

 intention of safeguarding the interests of their tramway 

 undertakings rather than of securing greater transport 

 facilities for the public, are renewing towards the motor- 

 omnibus, as a direct competitor with municipal tramways, 

 the hostility shown by the canal companies towards the rail- 

 ways when the probability of the former being supplanted by 

 the latter began to be realised ; though it is, of course, now no 

 longer a matter simply of one set of commercial companies 

 competing with another. 



A further rival to the electric tramway is arising in the 

 system of railless electric traction, the fundamental principle 

 of which is the application of electric power, derived from 

 overhead wires, to electric cars, resembling motor-omnibuses 

 (or alternatively, to goods lorries and vans), driven on ordinary 

 roads without rails, and capable of being steered in and out 

 of the traffic over the whole width of the roadway. 



The advantages claimed for the system are (i) that the cost 

 of installation is only from one-fourth to one-third of the 

 average cost of British tramways per mile of route, the per- 

 manent way of the latter being responsible for from two- 

 thirds to three-quarters of the capital expenditure, while 

 maintenance of tramway lines is also very expensive ; (2) that 

 costly street widenings are avoided ; (3) that Bills for railless 

 electric traction projects can be laid before Parliament without 

 first obtaining the assent of the local authorities ; (4) that 

 such traction can be profitably installed in towns having 

 populations insufficient to support a tramway, or having 

 streets unsuitable for tramway rails ; (5) that it is especially 

 useful, for linking up outlying districts with tramways and 

 railways ; for developing country and seaside places ; for 

 the conveyance of agricultural produce from rural districts 



