OUR UNUSED RIVER.
THE "Silent Highway" has of late set up a second title to its name. It is silent, not only because the traffic on it makes no noise, but because there is no longer any traffic. We do not mean of course, that the Thames as it flows through London has its surface unbroken by a single vessel. Those mysterious indus- tries which are associated with barges go on, so far as we know, much as they did. The traffic that has practi- cally come to an end is the passenger traffic above London Bridge. Spasmodic efforts have been made, summer after summer, to carry on a service of steamers, but they have been a failure so far as the public is concerned, and, we believe, a failure so far as the proprietors are concerned. Never has the effort been so intermittent and so barren of results as in the present year. Now and again a steamer comes out of one distance and disappears into another, but the intervals are so uncertain, and the conditions of the passage so unknown, that the arrival of the boat is awaited by only a solitary passenger. If he has any delicacy of feeling he naturally shuns a voyage in which the certainty that he is being carried at loss to the company is borne in upon him with fresh force at every empty pier.
And yet, when we call to mind the congestion of street traffic in London, the difficulty of moving in the principal thoroughfares at certain hours except at a footpace, the impossibility of throwing more in the way of car- riage upon the Underground Railway than it now has to bear—in fact, the whole problem, yearly becom- ing more insoluble, of how to reconcile the con- flicting needs of London business and London pleasure in the matter of locomotion, it seems a pity that the river should no longer be regarded as an element in the ques- tion. Running right through London, with a dense population on both banks, it might, one would think, be a principal channel of London passenger traffic. In summer, at all events, it is a pleasant way of moving about, and many of the places on its banks are more easily approached by water than by land. If there were an adequate service there are few people who would not prefer to make the journey, say from Chelsea to the Temple, by steamer rather than by omnibus or rail- way. Why is it, then, that the money invested in Thames steamboats has always been wasted ? We should be dis- posed to answer, 'Because not enough has been spent.' People will not change rail or omnibus for a steamer unless they can count upon being equally well served. Then the superior pleasantness of one mode of travelling over the other is given the weight that naturally belongs to it. The river steamers have been organised on a plan which prevents this consideration from ever coming into play. Nobody has travelled by them except those to whom it is of less importance to get to their journey's end than to be in fresh air while they are on the way there. If the Thames is to take its proper place among the arteries of London, it must have a service of steamers organised on a scale large enough to do away with the necessity of waiting for more than a minute or two at any point along its course, with piers at frequent intervals and placed so as to enable passengers to land at points which they could not otherwise reach without difficulty, with boats big enough to carry a large number of passengers, and with arrange- ments characterised by a careful consideration of the various wants of different sections of the public. To keep all these objects in view at once would require a large outlay of capital, and an outlay which at first, and possibly for some considerable time, would bring in no return. It is of little use to expect private capitalists to make the attempt on these lines. The reward is too distant to have any attractions for them. It can only be looked for from some public body which can afford to lie out of its money and to set public convenience before immediate profit. The only authority which combines with these qualifications the necessary local interest is the London County Council. In some of its experiments in locomotion the Council has appeared as a rival of private enterprise. We are not prepared to say that this fact furnishes a conclusive argument against such undertakings. Each case must stand on its own merits, and be judged by the results to the public. But the argument in favour of an under- taking is very much stronger when it appropriates a field hitherto unoccupied, and so confers on .,the public an advantage it has not hitherto enjoyed.
The points which ought most to be considered in a river service which should be of real use to Londoners seem to be three. In the first place, attention must be paid to two classes of passengers, —short-distance travellers and long-distance travellers. To meet their respective wants there must be a service of express steamers and a service of stopping steamers. It is of no use to tell the man who wants to get from Chelsea to Blackfriars as quickly as possible that he must go in a steamer which makes its first stoppage at Battersea Park. During certain hours of the day there might be little need for an express service, but it would be indiSpensable for passengers going eastwards in the morning or west- wards in the late afternoon. The next requisite is the provision of steamers large enough to carry many passengers and to divide them into two classes. The crowd would be attracted by low fares, while those who disliked a crush would gladly pay for a little more room. More important still would be the piers. At present they are few in number, and in some cases they are incon- veniently placed. If a short-distance traffic is to be developed, these defects must be made good. A steamer which takes a passenger far beyond the point where he wishes to land cannot look for his regular patronage. While the express service would convey passengers who want to get into London quickly, the object of the stopping service should be to discover as many places as possible to which people want to be conveyed. This latter service should be in a great measure a cross-river service. There are still long reaches of the Thames unprovided with bridges, and here the course of the stopping steamers might conveniently be of a zigzag order. The only example of the kind as yet has been the passage across the river from Westminster Bridge to Lambeth Palace, but it might well be extended from Westminster Bridge to Waterloo Bridge, and thence on to the Temple pier. It is strange that the value of a pier at the south end of Waterloo Bridge seems never to have occurred to the owners of river steamers. Yet the sight of the crowds that are discharged from Waterloo Station every morning might well have suggested that a large proportion of them would find it more convenient to cross the river in a steamer to the Temple or Blackfriars, than to go over the bridge and make their way there by laud. Whether the stopping steamers should cross from point to point, or whether there should be a separate service for the right and lest banks, connected by steam ferries here and there, would be one of the points which an able traffic manager would have to settle. Probably, too, it would be found advantageous to include in the service several of the piers below London Bridge.. There are large business neighbourhoods on both sides of the river which can only be reached by water by changing steamers at London Bridge. There is no intrinsic differ- ence in the character of the services above and below bridge to make this delay necessary. If these various wants, actual or possible, were all consulted, we see no reason why the Thames should not be crowded with passenger steamers, with the result that the passenger traffic in the streets running parallel with it would be appreciably lessened. When we speak of steamers, we do not, of course, mean that steam is the only motive power that could be used. If it should be found practic- able to use electric launches instead of steamers, London would all be the better for the change. But the main thing to be kept in view is the creation of a river service of some kind which in extent, in simplicity, and in adapta- tion to various needs should be worthy of London and the Thames. We believe that in the hands of the County Council such a service might make the river useful to an extent which has never yet been realised. It is conceivable indeed, that the change might be made to embrace a portion even of the business traffic of London, at all events as regards the warehouses on both banks of the river. Why should goods be carried along the streets in waggons when they might equally well be carried along the river in barges ? Why should not the night be utilised for the carriage of goods as well as the day for the carriage of passengers ? There may be good ground for pronouncing this impossible. All we contend is that hitherto no one has so much as thought whether it is possible or not. The omission is due perhaps to the same contempt for slow traffic which has led to the partial disuse of our canals. But with the difficulties of getting about London in front of us we cannot afford to allow any remedy for the present congestion to go unconsidered.
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