Capacity fifteen passengers; weight, 2 tons 13 cwt.; speed, 12 miles an hour
By permission of the Fischer Motor Vehicle Syndicate, Ltd., London
The manager of the Road Car Company is of opinion that the new vehicles will carry from twelve to twenty passengers. Owing to the greater speed of the motors, however, the passenger accommodation provided by, say, half a dozen such cars would be greater than that of a similar number of omnibuses, for the service would be more frequent. Not much increase of speed can be hoped for in congested areas, but outside these the motor should be able to run half as fast again as the horsed ’bus.
There exists, however, no reason why a still more improved and refined omnibus service should not be started, electricity alone being adopted, instead of steam, petrol, or a combination. Runs of seventy and eighty miles without recharging are perfectly feasible by using standard long-distance batteries, and would suffice for the daily journeys of the omnibus, while the recharging could be effected with little or no trouble after working-hours.
Motor-omnibuses, besides working on the regular routes, can be run on the tramway time-table system on tramway sections where there is little traffic; while for developing scantily-populated districts and accustoming people to travel, automobile public conveyances are perfect agencies, the very fact that they can choose their own route accentuating this great advantage; and on special occasions, for instance when exhibitions are held in places inaccessible by tramways, they will be a source of considerable profit.
Our provincial towns (take Eastbourne and Hastings for example) are beginning to wake up on the subject, and many of them have adopted or contemplated the starting of some form of horseless omnibus, in several cases the motive power being electricity. Across the Atlantic automobile ’buses are run by the Fifth Avenue Stage Company of New York City down Fifth Avenue, and have proved most popular; while in Chicago there are three lines of electric omnibuses successfully competing with the street cars for patronage. They are double-decked, seating forty passengers, and when they are “full-up” express speed is put on, and there are no more stoppages until the down-town district is reached.
As to four-wheeled cabs, they are hopelessly behind the times, though excellent ones may be evolved out of the landaulette type of electromobiles. During sixty-two years of sullen toleration on the part of the public, the growler has improved but little, and it remains a mystery why in the streets of the world’s metropolis comfortable and comely private vehicles cannot be hailed for hire, as in other cities.
New and improved cabs, such as the “Brougham,” the “Clarence,” and the “Chesterfield,” from time to time appear in our streets, and inspire hope that a general reformation is about to take place, and that neat little coupés will be universal. But in some unaccountable manner, after a brief season they disappear from public view—as did the lemon-coloured electric broughams of a few years ago—relegated to some mysterious region where vehicular failures find employment when banished from Modern Babylon.