ROAD TRANSPORT

Opotiki News, Volume I, Issue 114, 25 November 1938, Page 4

ROAD TRANSPORT

A GLANCE BACK CONDITIONS 100 YEARS AGO “Oii'iisionhi careless references ip the popular press to road transport as a ‘new industry’ read -strangely when it is remembered liow well established was the public carrier by road and- tin; lioirse-hauled equivalent of the public service vehicle as long ago as tlu> begin'niug of the eighteenth century,” says Modern Transport London.

“Indeed, a eentury ago the road transport industry was already in the tl iron's of reorganisation consequent upon the coming ol the railway. Carriage of goods at regular intervals over distances up to 100 .miles had been established early in the seventeenth century, and the first Turnpike Act, designed to provide for the maintenance of part of the Great North road, was passed in JGGJ. “By tlie beginning of the eighteenth eentury stage coach services were .sufficiently organised I'cr York to he reached from London in four days, of Edinburgh in 13 days. The stage coach one hundred years ago had reached itsvpeuk' of perfection. Gas lighting appeared in certain vehicles plying from Glasgow in 1827, anil at a fare of between 2d and -Id a mile passengers ecu Id lie conveyed' at fairly high speed. “A last journey by mail coach from London to Glasgow in 1838 was carried out in 12 hours at a cost of about (id a mile.”