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49. Your Petitioners therefore submit that their undertaking having been so seriously depreciated in value as the result of the competition authorised by Govern- ment referred to above it is neither just or equitable that your Petitioners should in the future be called upon to pay any portion of their profits to Government as laid down in Section 47 of the Tramways Ordinance 1902.
Your Petitioners therefore humbly pray that Your Excellency may be pleased to take such steps as may be necessary for the introduction into and the passing by the Legislative Council of Hong Kong of an Ordinance to amend the Tramways Ordin- ance, No. 10 of 1902, by the deletion of Clause 47 of that Ordinance and by pro- viding that your Petitioners shall not thereafter be required to pay any royalty in respect of their undertaking.
And your Petitioners will ever pray, &c.
Dated this 16th day of December, 1929.
SEALED with the Common Seal of Hong Kong Tramways Limited and signed by Benjamin David Fleming Beith and Leonard John Davies two of the Directors thereof and Countersigned by William Frederick Simmons the Secretary thereof in the presence of :-
(sd.) D. J. LEWIS, Solicitor,
HONG KONG.
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L.S.
(sd.) B. D. F. BEITH.
(sd.) L, J. DAVIES.
(sd.) W. F. SIMMONS.
Enclosure No. (8).
'The Hong Kong Daily Press"
(Leading Article of 21st March, 1930).
TRAMS AND MOTOR-BUSES.
Some very striking facts and figures were revealed by the Chairman of the Hong Kong Tramways, Ltd., at the annual general meeting of that concern. Traffic receipts for last year amounted to $1,606,000—a total which shows a falling-off of nearly three lakhs as compared with receipts for 1928. This remarkable drop, we are told, is mainly due to the competition of motor-bus services. During the year efforts were made by the Company to obtain from the authorities the necessary permission to run its motor-buses on more remunerative routes than those now maintained, but without meeting with much success. The Chairman did not in- dicate what applications were actually refused, nor the reasons given for such re- fusal. Nor was anything said in explanation of a curious state of affairs revealed at the previous annual meeting in connection with the bus-service along Queen's
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Road. Quite a lot of interest was aroused in this matter twelve months ago, but neither the directors nor the shareholders referred to the subject at the general meeting held this week. If the mystery has been solved, it is a pity the solution was not revealed; if it still remains a mystery, it is strange nobody troubled to ask why it has not been solved
The Tramway Company long since realised
the possibilities of petrol-driven passenger vehicles, and five years ago applied for permission to run a bus service between Causeway Bay and Whitty Street via Queen's Road. On the ground that the last-named thoroughfare was too narrow to carry such traffic this application was refused. Two years later, in 1927, this application was renewed, but nothing happened beyond a formal official acknow- ledgment of its receipt. In 1928 a third application was made by the Tramway Company for permission to run a service between Taikoo and Blake Pier, but again without success, though a permit was given that year to another concern, allowing a bus service through a street which had been previously described as too narrow for such traffic. The result of this concession was that for a distance of nearly five miles the tramways had to run in competition with another company operating a motor-bus service which followed a shorter route between two busy terminal points. Eventually official permission was given to the Tramway Company to run buses any- where along its own routes-a concession which is not quite the same as being able to run services either alternative or supplementary to those already maintained on the rails.
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Licences to run motor-bus services are becoming exceedingly valuable now- a-days in every part of the world, and the circumstances attending the granting or refusal of applications to establish services are very closely scrutinised by the parties interested—and they include the public.
The public whom these services are designed to serve surely has a right to know a little more than it does about the manner in which applications for permission to establish bus services in the Colony are dealt with. So far as we are aware, no explanation has been ever given as to why a privilege refused to one concern on a very definite ground was granted to another without the objection originally men- tioned having been removed or amended. However, some interesting develop- ments were hinted at in the speeches made at the Tramway Company meeting. The Chairman announced that negotiations have been opened with a view to acquir- ing the business of the Hong Kong Hotel Motor Garage. At an early date it is proposed to inform shareholders of the position and lay certain proposals before them. Disclosures of the nature of these proposals will be awaited with very keen interest. Judging by what was said at the recent meeting, it seems probable that the mystery to which we have already referred is to be intensified by the concern to which the Queen's Road licence was granted two years ago negotiating the sale of that franchise to the concern whose application for the privilege was refused by the Government. In other words, there appears to be prospects of the Tram- way Company acquiring indirectly that which it was found impossible to acquire by the direct method-a curious state of affairs which, no doubt, can be but has not been explained.
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