THE CLOSED HIGHWAY.
ASELECT Committee of the House of Commons has determined that the Thames is to remain closed to passenger traffic. It had before it two Bills, one pro- meted by the London County Council, the other by private enterprise, and in both cases it has found the preamble not proved. As regards the latter Bill, we are not surprised at the Committee's decision. It is exceedingly doubtful if any private company would be able to run a service of steamers at a profit, and equally doubtful whether, if such a service could be kept up, the public would derive any great advantage from it. It is not so very long since steamers ran at more or less uncertain intervals from Chelsea to Woolwich, and though their withdrawal was regretted by many, that regret was unmixed with surprise. The steamers were small and inconvenient, the piers were few and far between, and those that there were owed their existence to chance rather than to any calculation of public convenience. There was no certainty that if the private Bill submitted to the Committee had been sanctioned we should have seen anything more satisfactory than what until very recent years was to be seen every summer, and it was hardly worth while to invoke the majesty of Parliament to give us nothing better than that.
The ease is different when we turn to the County Council Bill. The Council stands in a position which no private company can hope to make its own. It can if it chooses spend money without looking for, or even hoping to get, any direct return. It is not even necessary that the concern should pay its way. That is a question for the ratepayers. They may, if they think fit, not only dispense altogether with a dividend, but contribute out of their own pockets to the yearly cost. Probably this fact had a great deal to do with the action of the Select Committee. The counsel for the promoters showed no disposition to overrate the chances of success. The service the Council proposed to set up might pay, probably would pay, but the County Council did not tie themselves to this probability. Their contention was that even if it did not pay, even if in the end some part of the cost did fall on the ratepayers, the money would be well spent. The County Council would only be carrying out one of the main objects for which it exists,—the promotion of the convenience and comfort of the inhabitants of London. The Committee evidently took a different view. They held that if the County Council choose to start an undertaking which they are free to take up or to leave alone, they must be able to prove that the undertaking will be profitable,—profitable, at all events, to the extent of showing a margin which will secure the ratepayers against loss. If the County Council trade at all, they must trade on sound business lines. As a general rule, we have no fault to find with this principle. We have no wish to see the County Council embarking upon any scheme presented to them provided only that it promises to make Loudon a pleasanter city to live in. After all, one of the conditions that make a city pleasant to live in is a moderate demand on the part of the rate collector, and that special charm London seems in a fair way to lose. The only question is whether in this particular instance the County Council could prove exceptional circumstances, and we are decidedly of opinion that they were in a position te do this. Even if the worst calculation had turned out true, the loss to the ratepayers would have been very small, while the convenience secured in return would have been large, and likely to increase. A little more faith, a little more imagination, on the part of the Committee would have shown them, we think, that this was a case in which some risk might fairly be run in consideration of the probable benefit which the County Council's scheme would confer upon London as a whole.
It is true that the adoption of this or some similar plan is only postponed. A Royal Commission is now sitting to inquire into the whole question of London traffic, and it is inconceivable that it should pass over so great an instrument of traffic as the great waterway which runs through the very centre of London. In no other city in the world where the need is even approximately as great, and the means of meeting it even approximately as adequate, is there an instance of such stupid neglect as that with which the Thames is treated. Here is a broad tidal stream, navigable at all times and at all seasons—for even in the fogs of winter the river service might be maintained with no greater difficulties than beset the maintenance of the street service—of which we now contentedly make no use whatever. The con- gestion of the land traffic is yearly getting greater- the appointment of a Royal Commission to discover and suggest a remedy is a sufficient proof of this—and we take no steps to transfer any part of it to the waterway. The river between Chelsea and London Bridge carries nothing save a few barges, yet it is far broader than any street that the most ambitious architect has ever designed, and runs between banks on which half, and more than half, the wealth and industry of London is brought together. Every morning and evening vast crowds of all classes have to get to their work or to their homes. The condition at these hours of the Underground Railway, of the "tubes," of every omni- bus and tramcar, is conclusive testimony to the need these people feel of the means of carriage. They have not to be tempted into trying new methods of locomotion ; they crowd and crush into every kind of vehicle that is offered to them. Every additional opportunity has in its turn been expected to injure some of those already in existence, and has proved to have had no such result. Neither the Underground Rail- way nor the "Tube" has emptied the omnibuses, and if the electric trams should be more successful, it will only be in the case of omnibuses running absolutely side by side with them. Yet all this time the river, which has the immense advantage over the railroad, the "tube," and the tramway that it is there ready made, is turned to no account. What a welcome we should give to a railroad, a "tube," a tram-line, which was handed over to the public with the lines already laid, the maintenance of the permanent way provided for, and nothing left to be done except the provision of the car- riages and the motive power ? Yet that is what Nature does for us in the case of the Thames. She furnishes the stream, and only asks us to put vessels on it, and it is this latter task that has proved too much for the House of Commons. Electric tramways, apparently, the House has risen to, provided they are modest, keep on the south side of the river, and so do not thrust themselves beneath the wheels of carriages. Indeed, to entirely has the spirit of tramcar enterprise taken hold of the public mind that the Prince of Wales himself has been invoked to bless the latest enterprise of the County Council, and to travel in the first car started. Yet this new and costly undertaking does but provide a more adequate and more comfortable mode of conveyance over a route already served by horse tramcars and by omnibuses. It is an immense improvement over anything that has gone before, but it only does better what was done already. It opens out no new route, and as regards street congestion it probably rather increases than lessens it. Supposing that the route from Westminster to Tooting had lain alongside a new street some eight times the width of any existing street, so that the new traffic would at once have relieved the previous con- gestion, and brought the means of locomotion to districts hitherto without them, how we should have been called upon to admire the enterprise of the County Council, while speaking with bated breath of the cost. All these recommendations are combined in the Thames, with the addition of an entire absence of any initial outlay. The street is made and paved to our use, and its construction has not displaced a single family or involved the pay- ment of a farthing of compensation. The Thames has been there all along ; it is there now, simply waiting to be used. And all that stands in the way is what we cannot but call the perverse economy of a Select Committee.
No doubt the scheme of the County Council would have cost money. Very possibly, since if it is to answer eventually it must be started on a sufficiently large scale in the first instance, it would have cost more than the County Council estimated. But does any one suppose that the organisation of street traffic and the relief of street congestion in such a city as London can do other than cost money ? We cannot get water or drainage without paying for it, and if it be true that locomotion is rapidly coming abreast of these two needs in point of urgency and difficulty, we must not expect to get it on easier terms. What we cannot see is why the money that locomotion must in any case cost should not be spent in setting up an adequate service of steamers on the river just as much as on making new streets and laying them with new tramways. The only reason we can assign for the public indifference to the subject is that the popular imagination is limited by the popular experience, and that never having seen what the Thames could become under a properly conducted service, we cannot picture to ourselves what it would be like. If by some miracle the river could at once be furnished with a proper fleet of large and airy steamers, giving ample accommodation, having restaurants on board, starting at frequent intervals, some stopping at few, others at many, piers, and these piers carefully placed at the most convenient points for passengers, we should simply wonder that we had done without these advantages so long.
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