CHAPTER VII
THE BACKWARDNESS OF ELECTRIC TRACTION IN GREAT BRITAIN
Popular objections to the overhead system are not, of course, quite dead. Every tramway proposal in districts where the trolley has not already penetrated is still opposed on the ground of disfigurement and danger. This opposition serves as an index to the severity of the struggle which the advocates of the trolley system had to encounter before they made it almost universal in large cities. But the dislike of the public for a questionable novelty was not the sole reason why electric tramway enterprise was backward in Great Britain.
It is not strictly accurate to say that electric tramway enterprise was backward. The enterprise was there, in spirit, but circumstances were very much against it. Tramway schemes are controlled by special legislation which was passed before electric traction was contemplated; and this legislation has not been amended in any material degree to suit the altered conditions brought about by the use of electricity.
The Tramways Act, 1870—which is the master Act of the situation—was framed at a time of reaction against public monopolies. Before that time, gas, water, railway, and other companies had been granted statutory powers in perpetuity; and when a local authority wanted to take the supply of gas or water into its own hands, it had to buy the existing undertakings at the valuation put upon them by the owners themselves. There were frequent complaints about excessive purchase terms, and also about extortionate rates charged by the monopolist companies. Consequently, when horse tramways came on the scene, the legislature determined to put the new 'monopoly' on quite a different basis. The Tramways Act provided, first, that no application for tramway powers would be so much as considered if it did not gain the consent of the local authorities interested; second, that the period of tenure should be limited to twenty-one years; and third, that the local authorities should have the option, at the end of the period or at seven-year intervals afterwards, of buying the tramway undertaking at the 'then value' of the plant (rails, horses, cars, depots, etc.) without any allowance for compulsory purchase, goodwill, future profits or any other consideration whatsoever.
This Act was passed with the very best of intentions. It had the advantage of substituting, for the costly and clumsy procedure by Private Bill, the simple and cheap process of applying to the Board of Trade for a 'Provisional Order' which would acquire the full force of an Act when ratified (in a more or less automatic way) by Parliament. But in spite of its good intentions it proved a serious stumbling-block, especially when electric traction was proposed.
The effect of the limited tenure system, with compulsory expropriation on what were called 'scrap-iron' terms, was to make the companies very reluctant to spend one penny more than was absolutely necessary during the concluding years. Capital expenditure on improvements in equipment was regarded as out of the question, since there was not sufficient time to recoup the difference between first cost and the 'then value' at the purchase period. Money was grudged for the upkeep of track, the repair and painting of cars, and the hundred and one items of expense which are essential to a well-conducted tramway. System after system fell into a state of shabby gentility, hoarding money against its inevitable end.
This was the condition when, in the middle eighties, electric traction was suggested. The public, suffering from the decay of the tramway service, but not realising that the cause lay with an Act devised for the public benefit, expected the tramway companies to adopt the new mode of propulsion. But as the conversion to electric working involved track-work costing several thousands of pounds per mile, and new cars costing several hundreds each, together with a large generating plant and new car depots, the change was commercially impossible to companies which were forced to retain their old horse equipment in order to realise something for the shareholders in the day of expropriation. From these causes there arose a demand that the municipalities should take over the tramway systems and do what the companies appeared too slow to undertake.
Thus a strong impetus was given to municipal tramway enterprise. But this impetus did not remove the causes of delay. The local authorities had good economic reasons for waiting until the existing tramway leases ran out and so enabled purchase to be made upon the most advantageous terms. They were also obliged to move very cautiously in adopting so radical and so novel a change as electric traction. Municipalities are not speculative traders, who are ready to take risks after a rapid expert investigation of a new policy. Further, no municipality likes to accept the decision of another as valid for its own district.
The consequence was that each municipality thought it necessary to get its own expert report on the subject and, in many cases, to send its own deputation to inspect Continental tramway systems. These preliminary studies, with debates in Council chambers and newspaper columns, with public meetings of encouragement or protest, and with the erection of experimental lines, took up so much time that little of a substantial nature was done until several years after engineers were ready and willing to carry out the conversion of large systems of horse tramways to electric working.