COMPETITION BARRED

Evening Post, Volume CX, Issue 71, 20 September 1930, Page 8

COMPETITION BARRED

A brief cable message from Syd ney yesterday stated:

The Transport Trust has decided that all taxi and bus services which compete- with trams must be abolished.

This goes much further than regulation of competition. It means that competition must cease.' In New Zealand a similar policy has been applied by authorising municipalities to acquire competitive bus services, and giving the councils power (as licensing authorities) to prevent the establishment of new services. But the Sydney Transport Trust's decision goes a step further, including taxi services. Hitherto we have not taken such a step, though the General Manager of Railways in his last report claimed that it would be necessary to protect the Railway bus service between Napier and Hastings from private taxi services. One can understand, however, that this is an issue that may yet demand consideration. It would be little use putting 30-seating buses off the road if the business were immediately to be snapped up by smaller taxis running on scheduled routes at low fares.» But this does not cover the whole issue. For the protection of pub-licly-owned services the public may be deprived of the use of the routefollowing taxis. Then what of the private car? If it is permissible to forbid scheduled taxi runs, is it not equally permissible to prohibit unscheduled journeys if the taxi-hirer could travel the same way by tram? And why should the private earowner be permitted to rob the tramway system of fares by riding himself or giving rides to his friends? It may be said that such questions are ridiculous, but they only appear so because they have not been fully considered. The private car and the hired vehicle have both made inroads on public transport business, and it may be difficult to introduce a system of regulation which will not have the appearance of one law for the rich and another'for the poor.