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were the Hong Kong and Shanghai Hotels Company, referred
to in paragraph 12 of the petition as a "party whose business was primarily that of hotel proprietors". Since 1921 that company had successfully operated a bus service between the Hong Kong Hotel (or alternatively Blake Pier) and Repulse Bay Hotel, their new Hotel on the south side of the Island, viâ Caine Road (through the City of Victoria) Pokfulam, and Aberdeen, which service was later diverted
to the present direct route on the opening to traffic of Stubbs Road, and Repulse Bay Road. From 1926 they maintained a service of motor buses between the University (with
extension to a group of houses on the south side of the Island known as Felix Villas) and the centre of the town.
The transportation of the inhabitants of
the villages on the south of the Island was left to their
own initiative and in 1921 the Aberdeen Kai Fong Motor Bus Company commenced a service between Aberdeen and
Victoria.
Three motor bus companies were responsible
for the institution of services in Kowloon. One of these
was the China Motor Bus Company, the present licensee for Hong Kong island. One of these companies was in 1929 taken over by the Hong Kong Tramways, who continued to operate it till the Kowloon services were unified in 1933.
These services were all initiated by
companies other than the Hong Kong Tramways.
6.
Paragraph 12 of the petition states that the first grievance of the Hong Kong Tramways against the
Government of Hong Kong was the grant to the Hotel Company in 1928 of an exclusive licence to institute a public motor bus service along Queen's Road. The Tramways Company
appears to think that its application dated 12th February, 1925, (Appendix B) for permission to provide "a railless
trolley