The Tramway Shelter.

Press, Volume LXVI, Issue 20091, 21 November 1930, Page 10

The Tramway Shelter.

It is unfortunate for candidates for the Tramway Board that they will not he able to escape taking sides on the controversy over the Shelter. In ordinary circumstances they would be under no obligation to discuss anything but broad questions of policy, and the public would have no right to expect them to descend to details which they have not sufficiently considered. But the circumstances are no longer ordinary. We have the fact, first of all, that the Mayor wishes to rush the Council, or the Board, or both together, into replacing the present Shelter before it is removed, and replacing it in the Square; perhaps in three or four places in the Square. In the second place there has been a quite definite indication by the Board that it expects the Council to bear some of the expense of these removals and replacements — apparently on general principles. Finally it seems to be agreed that there will be some alteration in the position of the tram-lines. In other words, broad questions of policy will not at present satisfy the public, and candidates will be well advised to say at once where they stand on these three issues. If they think that people wait for trams in the Square, not because they have been encouraged to do so until the practice has become a habit, but because it is necessary to do so if they are to avoid inconvenience, they had better say so quite plainly and stand or fall by the decision. It is not a question of party or, at this stage, of the Board's finances. It is a question of saving the Squaie, the Cathedral, the average quiet citizen from being doomed for ever to vulgar invasions and disturbances.