A NINE HOURS' CENSUS ON
TYPE OF VEHICLE. Sept. 20, 1906. Sept. 18, 1911.
Horse-drawn buses 1776 21
Motor-buses 441 1599
Horse-cabs 1051[70] 260
Motor-cabs (taxis) 10 1131
Statistics taken on the Portsmouth Road for the Surrey County Council on
seven successive days in corresponding weeks of July, 1909, 1910 and 1911
show that the numbers of motor-vehicles passing between 8 a.m. and 8 p.m.
were:--
YEAR. NO. OF MOTORS.
1909 5,863
1910 7,823
1911 10,635
These figures give an increase in two years of 81 per cent. During twelve
hours on a Saturday in July, 1911, the number of motor-vehicles counted was
3279, or an average of 273 per hour. The greatest number passing in a
single hour was 524, while during the period of the heaviest traffic 90
passed in ten minutes.
All these varied and ever-extending uses to which motor-vehicles are being
put would seem almost to foreshadow the time when the horse is likely to be
found only at the Zoological Gardens, as a curious survival of a bygone age
in traction.
Definite statistics as to the extent to which automobilism, in its manifold
phases, constitutes an industry in itself are not available; but the
activities now employed on or in connection with motors, motoring, and
motor transport are manifold and widespread.
{488}For many years the crippling effect of legislative restrictions
greatly checked the development of motor-car construction in this country.
The Act of 1896 gave a stimulus to the building of pleasure cars, but
French and German makers had the advantage until British manufacturers
showed they could produce cars which would bear comparison with the foreign
importations.
Real expansion of the home industry came with the Heavy Motor-car Order of
1904, although even then no great degree of progress followed immediately
thereon. Traders generally were reluctant to acquire commercial motors for
themselves until the success of the new vehicles had been assured, and some
early failures, due to faulty construction, gave commercial motors a bad
name at the start. With the adoption of improved methods, their utility was
fully established, and the expansion of the industry during the last four
or five years has been remarkable in the extreme.
British manufacturers had already gained a world-wide reputation for their
steam road-vehicles (traction engines), and they readily adapted their
plant, etc., to the building of the best type of commercial motors when the
initial difficulties had been overcome. While, therefore, French and German
makers were still sending their pleasure motors to this country, British
producers of commercial motors kept this branch of the industry in their
own hands, the position to-day being that practically all the public
service and commercial motors used in this country are British-made. The
main if not the only chance here for foreign vehicles of these types is
when the British makers cannot execute orders promptly enough to meet
requirements.
In point of fact the orders coming to hand far exceed the present
productive capacity of some of our manufacturers, who, in addition to
seeking to supply the home market, are now sending British-made commercial
motors to almost every country in the world. I am assured, by an authority
in a position to know, that certain of the English and Scotch manufacturers
specialising in commercial motors had so many orders on hand in October,
1911, that unless they increased their premises, and laid down fresh
machinery, they would be unable to execute any more until the end of 1912.
Much enlargement or rebuilding of works is already {489}proceeding, while
manufacturers who have hitherto devoted their attention mainly or
exclusively to pleasure motors are now adapting their plant, etc., to the
making of commercial motors either instead or in addition. The demand for
pleasure motors is limited; that for public service motors and
motor-vehicles for traders is illimitable. From the great stores which keep
their "fleet" of delivery cars, and from the furniture-remover who wants
the equivalent almost of a traction-engine down to the draper, the grocer
or the butcher who is content with a modest three-wheel auto-carrier for
loads up to five or ten cwt., every class of trader is to-day finding that,
to keep pace with the times, and to deliver goods as promptly and at the
same distances as his competitors, he must needs have a quicker means of
road transport than a horsed-vehicle.
Then, while large traders having their fleets of motor-vehicles set up
their own repairing shops, the needs of smaller traders with only two or
three delivery vans are provided for by motor manufacturers or others who
undertake "maintenance" on contract terms, thus saving such traders from
all trouble in the matter of repairs and upkeep.
When one adds to these considerations the fact that traders not only in the
United Kingdom but in the colonies, in every European country, and even as
far away as Japan, are looking to English and Scotch manufacturers to
supply them with motor-traction vehicles, the impression is conveyed that
the further great development of the motor industry in the United Kingdom
will be far less in pleasure motors, or even in the motors used by doctors
and others for professional purposes, than in commercial motors; and this
impression is confirmed by a remark made by Sir Samuel Samuel at the
Motor-Aviation dinner given by him at the Savoy Hotel on October 30, 1911.
"The future of the motor-car industry," he said, "lay in the commercial
motor traffic, the solution of the street traffic problem lay in
motor-omnibuses, and in ten years time most of the tramway stock would be
scrapped."
Apart from figures as to the number of public service or commercial
motors--chiefly, as I have shown, of home manufacture--already in use, the
only available statistics indicating the growth of the British motor
industry are those given in the Board of Trade Returns concerning "cars,
chassis and {490}parts" exported, the total value thereof being £1,502,000
in 1909 and £2,511,000 in 1910. The imports in the same years rose from
£4,218,000 to £5,065,000. It may be assumed that the latter figures relate
more particularly to pleasure cars; though it should be remembered that
even on these, as imported from France or Germany, additional work may
often be done here--in the way of body-building or otherwise--to the extent
of £200 or so per car. Many allied trades are likewise doing a good
business in the supply of accessories.
Allowing, next, for the employment given to drivers, repairers and others,
and for the sum total (if it could only be estimated) of the amount
distributed annually by motorists among hotel proprietors and town and
country tradespeople, the circulation of money that is directly due to
motoring and motor-traction must be prodigious. As far back as 1906 it was
estimated that motor drivers alone in this country were receiving over
£5,000,000 a year in wages, that the wages paid to men employed in the
manufacture of cars and accessories amounted to nearly £10,000,000 a year,
and that the total number of drivers and others concerned in motoring was
about 230,000. But much has happened since 1906, and if these figures
accurately represent the position then, they would have to be greatly
increased to represent the position to-day.
Thus we see that automobilism--using the word in its widest
application--has not only brought about some remarkable changes in our
conditions of inland transport and communication but is itself rapidly
developing into still another of our national industries, even if it should
not have done so already.
Tube railways are an outcome of various attempts to solve a problem in
urban transport that more especially applies to London.
When railways were first brought to the Metropolis the prejudice against
them was so strong, and the lack of foresight as to the purpose they would
eventually serve was so pronounced, that in 1846 limits were set up, on
what were then the outskirts of London, within which the lines were not to
come. The whole of the central area was to be left free from railways, the
view of a Royal Commission which considered the subject in the year stated
being that, as the proportion {491}of short-distance passengers by the main
lines was only small, the probable demand for the accommodation of
short-distance traffic would not justify the sacrifice of property or the
expenditure of money that would be involved in placing the termini in
crowded centres. The same Commission recommended that if, at any future
time, it should be thought necessary to admit railways within the
prescribed area, this should be done in conformity with some uniform plan.
Under no circumstances, they urged, should separate schemes having no
reference to each other be tolerated.
It was not long before the growth of London and the transport needs of its
population made clear the fact that the exclusion of railways from the
central area could not be maintained, though the recommendation of the 1846
Commission as regards a uniform plan was wholly disregarded.
Supplementing the omnibuses originally established between Paddington and
the City in 1829 by Shillibeer came, in 1863, the first line of underground
railway, connecting Paddington station with Farringdon Street, and
constructed in an open cutting, where possible. An earlier idea of having
one central station in London for all the different main lines of railway
was discarded in favour of underground railways of the type here in
question; and the "inner circle," linking up most of the main-line termini,
was eventually completed. The original restrictions in regard to the
central area were also modified, such stations as those at Charing Cross,
Cannon-Street, Holborn and Liverpool Street being allowed to be set up
within the once sacred precincts. Branches were made from the inner circle
of the underground system; the main-line railways began to develop their
now enormous suburban business; the omnibuses were crowded in the busy
hours of the day, while the tramways, though excluded from the central area
still more rigidly than the railways had been, gained no lack of patronage
to or from the "outer fringe."
All these facilities served a most useful purpose; but they obviously
required to be supplemented by lines of railway which would directly serve
the central area of London, and both allow of easier movement from one part
of London to another and enable City workers to travel more readily between
their suburban homes and the immediate locality of their places of work or
business. Neither surface nor {492}overhead railways across the centre of
London were even to be thought of, while the cost of still more underground
railways of the "shallow" type already constructed was looked upon as
almost prohibitive, though underground any further London lines would
assuredly have to be.
A way was found out of the difficulty by the construction of deep-level
iron tubes passing through the stratum of clay underlying London, such
tubes providing for lines of railway along which trains to be worked by
electricity could pass between various stations--in still larger tubes--in
different parts of London and the suburbs.
The first of these tube railways was projected by the City and South London
Railway Company, and received the sanction of Parliament in 1884. The line
was opened in 1890, and with it London acquired the pioneer of those tube
railways which were to effect so revolutionary a change in her general
transport conditions. The Central London Railway followed, in 1900, and
since then London has been provided with a network of tube railways,
offering facilities for a more or less complete interchange of traffic,
north and south, and east and west, both between themselves and in
conjunction with the termini of the main line steam railways. In this way
movement about and across London has been greatly facilitated. Three of the
new tubes, the Bakerloo, the Piccadilly and the Hampstead have been united
into one system by the London Electric Railway Company, and, together with
the earlier District Railway and the London United Tramways, are under the
same control, with great advantage to everyone concerned, while the
original underground lines--the Metropolitan and the Metropolitan
District--have been electrified and vastly improved. The disadvantages of
"isolated projects" on which successive Commissions--the London Traffic
Commission among the number--have insisted so strongly have thus, to a
certain extent, been met by the principle of combination through private
enterprise. No action has yet been taken to carry out the recommendation
made in June, 1905, in the Report of the Royal Commission on London
Traffic, in regard to the formation of a London Traffic Board, though a
useful work is being done by the London Traffic Branch appointed by the
Board of Trade in August, 1907, "to continue and supplement the work of the
Royal Commission {493}by keeping the statistics up to date, collecting
information, and studying the problem of London traffic in all its changing
aspects." In the reports issued by this Branch will be found a mine of
interesting data on London traffic conditions, supplementing the abundant
information in the reports of the Royal Commission itself.
It is to be hoped that the sequel to these continued investigations will be
the eventual creation of some such central authority as the London Traffic
Board recommended. Whether this should be done by calling into existence
for London an entirely new body, such as the Public Service Commission
which controls all transportation questions and facilities in New York
City, or whether the simpler method of enlarging the powers of the present
Railway and Canal Commission should be adopted, by preference, are matters
of detail which the future must be left to decide; but the advantages that
would result from a greater degree of co-ordination in the organising and
regulating of London transport conditions are incontestable.
As showing the extent of the patronage which the electric railways of
London, whether tube railways or otherwise, are now receiving, I might
quote from the Board of Trade "Railway Returns" the following figures,
giving the number of passengers (exclusive of holders of season and
periodical tickets) carried in 1910:--
COMPANY OR LINE. NUMBER OF PASSENGERS.
Central London 40,660,856
City and South London 23,501,947
Great Northern and City 9,380,378
Waterloo and City 3,724,277
London Electric 95,647,197
Metropolitan 82,728,776
Metropolitan District 64,627,829
Whitechapel and Bow 19,886,273
{494}CHAPTER XXXI