Matters were not left entirely in the hands of the municipalities, various tramway companies having sought, as their twenty-one years’ tenure came to a close, to make such arrangements as would warrant an adaptation of their existing {457}system to electric traction; while other companies applied for powers to construct new lines or extensions 佛山桑拿按摩qq女 of lines on the same system. Parliament had certainly sanctioned a longer period of tenure than twenty-one years when the promoters could make an arrangement to this effect with the local authorities concerned; and it was hardly likely that a company would incur the great expense of constructing an entirely new tramway, with electrical installation and other requirements all complete, unless they had some guarantee of a longer tenure than the statutory period. But these very factors enabled the local authorities concerned to control the situation; and their power to exercise this control was made still more complete by the operation of Standing Order No. 22, which applied to Private Bills for tramway schemes requirements similar to those of the Tramways Act as regards the obligation on promoters to obtain the assents of local and road authorities.
These authorities had thus an absolute veto over any new tramway schemes, and such veto might finally rest in the hands of a single local authority, controlling a sparsely populated section of the proposed mileage, yet having, perhaps, the controlling voice in being the one authority whose approval was needed to make up the requisite two-thirds.
There had been some expectation on the part of tramway promoters that the general position would be improved by the Light Railways Act, 1896, many light railways being indistinguishable from tramways. Under this Act the assent of the local and road authorities is not required, and the frontagers’ veto was done away with by it in the case of light railways; but authority to oppose was given to railway companies, and in practice the Light Railway Commissioners held that they ought not to authorise a tramway as a light railway unless it connected the area of one local authority with another. For these and other reasons the Act was not so beneficial in regard to tramways as had been anticipated.
In the case of tramway companies it became a matter either of paying to the local authorities the “price” they asked for their assent, or else seeing the schemes fail at the start, without any chance of having them even considered on their merits. How local authorities have used—or abused—the power of control thus possessed by them is suggested by some remarks {458}made by Mr Emile Garcke in an article published in “The Times Engineering Supplement” of July 25, 1906, where he says:—
“The right of veto is exercised not so much with the desire to destroy a projected enterprise, but rather to exact the utmost conditions which a promoter will accept sooner than abandon the project. When a scheme is proceeded with in spite of these exactions it is taken as evidence that the conditions imposed have not been exacting enough; and whenever the operating company has occasion subsequently to ask the local authority to approve anything, the company is expected to offer more than commensurate consideration, although the object for which the approval is desired may be primarily for the benefit of the public. All these obstacles imply increased capital outlay or increased working costs, and perhaps both. If, notwithstanding these conditions, the company earns a moderate profit, it is accused of striving only after dividends to the prejudice of the public. If non-success of the enterprise follows, then the company is accused of being over-capitalised and mismanaged, and it has come to be considered an impertinence for a company to offer ever so mild a protest.”
On the same subject it is stated in “The Dangers of Municipal Trading,” by Robert P. Porter (1907):—
“The use of the veto has had disastrous effects on private enterprise. In many districts it has led to utter stagnation of personal initiative. Good schemes have been barred by local authorities out of pure caprice or prejudice. Other schemes have been allowed to proceed under barely tolerable conditions; the undertaking has been crippled from the start by the high price municipalities have exacted for their consent. Others, again, have been withdrawn by the promoter because he found it impossible to agree to the extortionate demands of the governing bodies.”
Mr Porter quotes various authorities who have expressed strong views on the subject of the veto.
The chairman of the Parliamentary Committee which considered a scheme of tramways promoted in Scotland said: “The Committee desire to put on record that in their opinion the original scheme was a good one, and calculated to be of much use to the district; but it has been so mutilated and loaded with conditions by conflicting interests and the {459}excessive demands of several local bodies that it now appears to the Committee to be wholly unworkable.”
In 1902 Mr Chaplin, at one time President of the Local Government Board, stated that “what local authorities would describe as conditions are regarded by promoters—and very often, no doubt, with good reason—as neither more nor less than blackmail. This has been the subject of great complaint for years, and I do not think I should be going too far if I said that on several occasions it has led to considerable scandals.”
Lest these expressions of opinion may be considered unduly severe by any reader unacquainted with the facts, I turn for some definite data to the “Exhibit to Proof of Evidence,” handed in by Sir Clifton Robinson to the Royal Commission on London Traffic when he was examined before that body in 1904.[62]
In the early days of his company (the London United), the local authorities, Sir Clifton said, “had not, perhaps, fully recognised their opportunity,” and the company got their assents comparatively cheaply under their first Act in 1898.
Two years later the price they had to pay for the assents of local authorities to a group of tramways in the Twickenham, Teddington and Hampton district was ￡202,000, or ￡16,000 a mile. The requirements imposed on the company took the form of “wayleaves” and of street improvements, the greater part of the latter being entirely apart from the actual needs of the tramway. The improvements in Heath Road, Twickenham, giving a 45-ft. roadway, cost for properties and works alone some ￡30,000. A like sum had to be spent in Hampton and Hampton Wick, where the work done included the setting back of the entire frontage of the Royal Deer Park of Bushey.
In 1901 the company sought for powers to construct twelve miles of tramway in Kingston-upon-Thames and neighbourhood. On this occasion the “concessions” wrung from {460}them by the local authorities amounted to ￡66,000 for street improvements, ￡20,000 for bridges, and a further ￡68,000, capitalised value of annual payments for so-called “wayleaves.” This made a total of ￡154,000, or ￡12,800 per mile, merely for assents to the construction of their lines. The details of the account included a sum of ￡1500 extorted by an urban district council as “a contribution towards some town improvement, not necessarily on the company’s proposed line of route, but anywhere in their district the council might desire.”
One item to which the company had to agree in 1902, before they could obtain an Act authorising them to build another thirteen miles of tramway, was the construction at Barnes of an embankment and terrace along the river side. It made a very pleasant promenade, and was certainly an addition to the amenities of the neighbourhood; but it cost the tramway company ￡40,000. The “price” of local authorities’ assents for these thirteen miles of line worked out thus: Street improvements (properties and works), ￡72,000; Barnes Boulevard, ￡40,000; “wayleaves” (capitalised), ￡100,000; a total of ￡412,000, or ￡31,600 per mile.
Altogether, in the four years, 1898-1902, the total expenditure of the company on
street and bridge improvements in respect to less than fifty miles of tramway amounted to ￡745,000; and although, to a certain extent, the widenings, etc., were necessary for electric tramway purposes, “the bulk of the expenditure under this head,” Sir Clifton declared, “was undertaken with a view to conciliate the local authorities, or was forced upon us by them as the ‘price of their assents.'” To this ￡745,000 was to be added ￡241,000, the capitalised value, at five per cent, of the “wayleaves” the company had also agreed to pay, making a total of ￡986,500, irrespective altogether of the cost of construction and equipment of the lines.
When, in 1904, the company proposed to construct still another twenty-one miles of tramway in the western suburbs of London, “they recognised their obligations to the local and county authorities,” Sir Clifton said, by proposing to undertake street, road and bridge widenings which would have cost them ￡217,932. They thought this a sufficiently generous “price” to pay for permission to provide the district with {461}improved transport facilities. Instead of being satisfied, the local authorities made demands which would have involved the company in a further expenditure of ￡642,630, making a total of ￡860,562. One urban district council included in its demands the construction by the tramway company of public lavatories and a subway. In a district where the company were prepared to spend ￡30,000 on road improvements the county council demanded a carriageway of forty feet and wood paving throughout six and a half miles of country roads, involving the expenditure of a further ￡30,000.
Rather than submit to all these exactions the company abandoned their Bill. They had already abandoned sixty miles of proposed tramway extensions “owing,” said Sir Clifton, “to the demands or the uncompromising attitude of the local authorities,” although many of these lines would have been valuable connections with the existing tramway system, and would have served in no small degree the traffic needs of the districts concerned.
“It is not too much to say,” added Sir Clifton Robinson, in concluding his statement, “that instead of giving such proposals sympathetic consideration, if not practical encouragement, the attitude assumed by the average local authority of to-day is one of hostility, inspired by a desire to extort the uttermost farthing from promoters.”
In the face of experiences, or the prospect of experiences, such as these, many would-be promoters of tramway enterprise developed a natural reluctance to put their own money, or to try to induce other people to put theirs, into the business; and even some American financiers, who thought we were much too slow in tramway matters in this country, and came over here with the combined idea of showing us how to do things and of exploiting us to their own advantage, abandoned their plans and went home again when they got to understand the bearing of our legislative enactments on the situation.
So, as time went on, the local authorities had greater excuse than ever for constructing the tramways themselves; and most of the principal urban centres built lines of their own, sooner or later.
That there have been certain resemblances between State policy towards the railways and State policy towards the {462}tramways may have been already noticed by the reader. Just as the one was primarily based on suspicion and distrust due to the earlier action of the canal companies, so was the other inspired by what were regarded as the shortcomings of gas and water companies. Just, 佛山夜网论坛 also, as the local authorities, while not aiding the railways at all, were given authority to levy an abnormal taxation on them, so have they been given a free hand to exploit the tramway companies in making them pay a heavy price for assents to their enterprises. The story of tramways, again, like that not only of railways but of canals and of turnpike roads, shows the same early lack of centralised effort with a view to securing a national system; and this piecemeal growth of tramways, rather than of a tramway system, was, undoubtedly, fostered in proportion as (1) discouragement was given to private companies, which could have operated without respect to borough boundaries and county areas, and (2) tramway construction drifted more into the hands of local authorities, whose powers did not go beyond the borders of their own 佛山夜网 particular districts.
While recognising these resemblances, one must admit that the handicapping of the tramway companies has been far more severe than that of the railway companies, by reason of the power of absolute veto possessed by local authorities in regard to tramway schemes, and the use they have made of it. Parliament certainly never foresaw the extent of such use, or abuse, when it granted the said power of veto; and the practices in question, like the operation of tramways by the local authorities themselves, were due to a policy of drift and “leave alone” rather than to deliberate intention or expressed approval on the part of the Legislature. The misfortune is that when the new developments in tramways occurred, or that when the abuses arose and the innovations were introduced, Parliament did not revise its 佛山桑拿蒲友 legislation to meet the new conditions. The Royal Commission on London Traffic reported in 1905 in favour of the abolition of the power of veto, saying: “We consider it unreasonable that any one portion of a district should be in a position to put a stop to the construction of a general system of tramways required for the public benefit, without even allowing the case to be presented for the consideration of Parliament…. It appears to us that instead of a ‘veto’ it would be sufficient that local and {463}road authorities should have a locus standi to appear before the proposed Traffic Board and Parliament, in opposition to any tramway scheme within their districts, by whomsoever such tramway scheme might be promoted.” But nothing has yet been done in the way of carrying this recommendation into effect.
The proportions in which 佛山桑拿按摩会所street and road tramways and light railways in the United Kingdom were owned by (a) local authorities and (b) companies and private individuals respectively in 1909-10 are shown by the following table, taken from official returns:—
BELONGING TO NUMBER OF
UNDERTAKINGS. LENGTH
OPEN FOR
TRAFFIC. CAPITAL
EXPENDITURE ON
LINES AND WORKS
OPEN FOR TRAFFIC. TOTAL
EXPENDITURE
ON CAPITAL
ACCOUNT.
M.Ch. ￡ ￡
Local authorities 176 171017 36,807,264 49,568,775
Companies, &c. 124 85134 19,294,077 24,372,884
—— ———— ————— —————
Totals 300 256151 56,101,341 73,941,659
To this table I might append the following statistics as to the operation of street and road tramways and light railways in the United Kingdom in 1909-10:—
Capital authorised ￡93,佛山桑拿按摩网 124,187
Capital paid up ￡73,260,225
Number of horses 2,365
Number of locomotive engines 31
Number of cars:
Electric 11,749
Non-electric 601
Total number of passengers carried 2,743,189,439
Quantity of electrical energy used (Board of Trade unit) 483,671,806
Gross receipts ￡13,077,901
Working expenditure ￡8,132,114
Net receipts ￡4,945,787
Appropriations:—
Interest or dividends ￡1,913,872
Repayment of debt or sinking fund ￡1,133,134