Orders of the Day — LONDON COUNTY COUNCIL (CO-ORDINATION OF PASSENGER TRAFFIC) BILL [By Order].

Part of the debate – in the House of Commons at on 19 February 1929.

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Photo of Sir Henry Jackson Sir Henry Jackson , Wandsworth Central

Therefore, it will be obviously to the interest of the London General Omnibus Company, and indeed to the general public, to replace solid tyres by pneumatic tyres, and that will increase their possibilities of speed over tramway routes. I am advised that the London General Omnibus Company are proposing to replace the solid tyres on all their fleet by pneumatic tyres. Is it to be suggested that all that outlay of capital is to be nullified by not allowing them an increased rate of speed over tramway routes? If it is made possible for an omnibus to make more journeys over a tramway route, that is precisely the same as increasing the number of omnibuses, and, therefore, it is possible that we may get hack to that competition between omnibuses and trams in London which had such a disastrous result in years 1923 to 1927. Therefore, with this knowledge I had no hesitation in saying to my constituents in Wandsworth—and this is what caused so much comment by Mr. Herbert Morrison, and which has been repeated here to-night—that, if that intensive competition takes place again, converting, as it did before, a large profit into a large loss, the cost of that to the ratepayers of London may be just as serious as it was in those years.