Side by side with this development has come the astonishing progress of the passenger motor vehicle. Here again, London has been the big moving influence. The greatest city in the world has grown from small beginnings according to its own sweet will. It has not been laid out, as have younger towns, with any clear scheme in view for meeting the growth of traffic requirements. Here again, the nearest parallel is to be found in Paris. Portions of that city are still similar to, or even worse than, London in this respect, and are traversed only by narrow and winding roads laid out on no intelligible scheme. Paris, however, has the advantage that for the past one hundred years definite methods of improvement have been pushed. Control has remained vested in the same departments, and the policy has been continuous. Consequently, the network of small streets has gradually become subordinate to an admirable system of main thoroughfares of great width and beauty, at the intersections of which are wide open places generally utilised for the erection of some of those fine monuments so dear to the French nation.
Other and newer towns, of which Berlin may be taken as a fine typical example, have been from the first almost wholly constructed in accordance with a definite town planning scheme, and in all their later developments the tramcar has been regarded as a necessity of passenger transport, and every provision has been made to ensure that a complete system of railed traffic should be in every way facilitated, and so far as possible prevented from injuring the natural and architectural beauties, which must at all cost be maintained in the interests of trade prosperity as well as from æsthetic reasons.
In such cases, the motor omnibus has from the start come into direct competition with the electric tramcar, the latter being generally supported by enormously influential vested interests, the strength of which has been such as to cripple, or almost entirely prevent, the introduction of public service motors. Both in Paris and in London, conditions for one reason or another have opposed the universal adoption of railed transport in the streets. So far as London is concerned, the tramcar is useful and possible in suburban districts, and as a means of bringing people to within a short distance of the central areas. Beyond that point, its extension is probably impracticable, and is certainly open to very grave opposition, which has up to the present prevented the completion of anything approaching a comprehensive tramway system from north to south or from east to west. The central area a few years ago was served by the horsed omnibus, and it was with this vehicle and not with the tramcar that the motor omnibus in its early stages had to compete. Consequently, it was given a good opportunity of proving its desirable qualities and was not hopelessly handicapped by being set, when in very early and imperfect stages of development, directly against a more or less perfected system of passenger transport on rails. London has thus proved to be the world’s biggest nursery of the motor omnibus. Its early imperfections caused plenty of grumbling and a certain amount of inconvenience, but it was realised all along that it was only a matter of time before it would oust the horse omnibus from the streets.
In Paris also, the motor omnibus has been given fair chances, and has proved its worth. It has been employed partly on routes involving narrow roads and stiff gradients where trams would be dangerous, and partly on other routes the natural beauties of which are so pronounced that it was generally felt that the laying of tramway lines, or the creation of any permanent blots such as are occasioned by the erection of standards and wires, would be altogether a desecration.
The motor omnibus, after passing through its novitiate, has proved in the most practicable possible way the advantages of road motor transport to the general public. It has hit the short distance traffic of railways very hard, and has compelled these latter in self-defence to inaugurate motor services of their own, especially in country districts not well fed by the railways themselves. It is impossible to say to what a great extent the development of motor transport is the result of the anomaly under which the road passenger traffic of London is not controlled by the local governing authorities, who possess in other cities licensing powers reserved in London to the Chief Commissioner of Police. Other great British cities, as, for example, Manchester and Birmingham, for many years refused to allow the motor omnibus to prove its worth for fear of competition with tramways owned by the municipality, which, being itself the licensing authority, could refuse to give facilities under which any competition with its own concern could come into existence. It is only lately that the prolonged experience of London has proved to all these authorities the enormous utility of the motor omnibus, and its spread to every great city has either become an accomplished fact, or an inevitable development of the near future. Paris, with its smaller fleet of motor omnibuses, has not exerted a similar influence in anything approaching a similar degree throughout the provincial towns in France; and Berlin, which has very nearly tabooed the motor omnibus altogether, has done practically nothing towards the encouragement of motor transport in Germany. It is rather a curious fact that this policy should have been maintained in Berlin for so long, seeing that for many years past the German Government have been paying huge sums in the shape of subvention, with the sole object of encouraging the national use of trade motors. In all probabilities, the process of ocular demonstration on the streets of the capital would have been more effective than the whole of the expenditure that has been incurred.
From what has gone before, it will be seen that circumstances have all worked together to cause the development of motor transport of Great Britain to be far more rapid than in other countries. Added to this is the undoubted fact that the genius of the British engineer is best expressed in something substantial and durable. The heavy industrial motor is more typical of British tendencies than is the light fast car. As regards the latter we may be good imitators, and may be well able to keep on equality with competition. As regards the former we can do more, and we have shown ourselves able to lead the world and to produce finer industrial motors than can be obtained in any other country. Even the progressive engineers of the United States acknowledge that they must draw their inspirations in this movement from Great Britain, and are not infrequently to be found in this country studying what has been done, and learning lessons which they will apply at home and which may serve to bring them into strong competition with us, but are very unlikely to make them our superiors.
The general result of all these influences has been, as already stated, that Great Britain is the only European country in which the industrial motor is, in times of peace, used in numbers greatly in excess of the possible military requirements of our own forces. Consequently, the problem before our War Office has not been to encourage the use of heavy transport, but to direct the tendencies of design and popular taste into the channels in which they could be made to fall into line most completely with military requirements.
Next after ourselves, France is fortunate in the possession of the best road system of any European country, and this has helped industrial motor development to progress with fair rapidity, though not at such a speed as to enable the country to be self-supported as regards its needs in military motor transport. Germany, with a less complete road system, involving in many parts very severe gradients, has had more difficulty still in filling its military requirements, while Austria is in a position somewhat akin to that of Germany from this point of view. Consequently, in all these three great countries, the subvention scheme has had to be rather a scheme for encouraging the use of motor transport of any kind than an attempt to direct designers into any particular channels. Conditions in Belgium are somewhat akin to those obtaining in France; and, generally speaking, other European countries are so badly served by roads and so unfavourably situated as regards their requirements for the haulage and delivery of goods, that the development of industrial motor transport on a large scale has been out of the question, and consequently, the establishment of any subvention scheme would have proved futile. We are now in a position, with a fairly clear conception of the conditions obtaining in each of the countries concerned, to consider in more detail the nature of the schemes evolved in the interests of military transport, and to ascertain how far those schemes have been brought to successful issues.