1927-10-01 — Page 12

THE HONGKONG TELEGRAPH,

OLDSMOBILE SIX

RODUCT OF GENERAL MOTORS

111-inch Wheelbase-19.84 H.P. (R.A.C. Rating)—185 cubic Inches piston displacement-1928 model,

Our second shipment of four of the 1928 Model Oldsmo- bile Touring Cars is due to arrive on Offober 2. The last car of this second shipment was sold on August 26..

Our third shipment of six of the 1928 Model Touring Cars is due to arrive on October 24. Although orders are being booked rapidly for this third shipment, a few cars are still

available. Orders will necessarily have to be filled strictly in rotation.

THE DRAGON MOTOR CAR CO., LTD. Telephone Central 1246 or 1247..

33 WONG NEI CHUNG ROAD,

Leb's

AUTO AGENCY

10. Queen's Road Central (Next to Lazarusi Telephone Central 4925

HAPPY VALLEY.

USED CARS

WE HAVE THEM IN GOOD CON DITION AND OF ALL MAKES AND SIZES AT REAL BARGAIN PRICES

When you decide to SELL YOU CAR jis to your advantage TO SER US FIRST.

MOTORING SUPPLEMENT.

HIGHWAY FINANCE.

Methods Employed by the United States.

[By John N. Willya.j

"Of all inventions, the alphabet Motor Releases' Individual. and printing press alone excepted," writes Lord Macauley, "those which

Of the major means of communi- abridge distance have done most eation at our command to-day, two, for the elvilization of our species." the railroad and the steamship, Throughout the ages, transporta- have become so much a part of tion has been the medium which daily life that they need little has made possible not alone the study or analysis save in heroic advance of armies but the relation to the third and younger their more prosaic progress of culture member, the motor vehicle. and the pursuits of peace..

a Aeneas; through the stirring

SATURDAY, OCTOBER 1, 1927.

length upon the costly folly of con- structing roads, which cost $1,000 per mile.

The

when our engineers have been do not constitute an undue burden able to meet all of the demands upon the individual. of the public for improved ronda From the atandpoint of the fiscal for consequently it has been authorities of the government this Public Assumes Control. found necessary to devise ad- view has proved equally advantage- As the motor vehicle made its ministrative policies which would ous since through the levy of a presence felt, the demand for meet with fiscal exigencies. small special tax (somewhere highways grow in volume. irritation caused by private toll principle of this character now gen combined) the total sum received around $12.00 per vehicle to-day for Perhaps the most important registration fee and gasoline tax roads, the failure of their pro- erally accepted in the United States, is almost sufficient to meeting cur- moters to keep them in repair, and is that the sole purpose of the road rent highway fiscal requirements. the growing recognition that the is to carry traffic and the first duty interest of the entire public was of the engineer is to make available, bound up in the transportation as quickly as possible, the largest which the vehicle provided, forced possible mileage of highways. A relinquishment of these franchises and to-day there are virtually no toll ronds in the United States anywhere."

Service to Public First Consideration.

of way.

Under this plan, surfacing is left The result is an

immediate benefit to the public in the form of transportation facilities which results in increased revenues

In doing this what has become In the place of these private known as the stage construction rights of way, first the local sub-policy has been adopted. states and finally the nation each of whatever roads exlat at the mo- This division of government, then the consists of a constant maintenance recognized a responsibility in the ment Yet, of the three, I think it is improvement of public waya of sisting of simply adequate drain

when improvement con- possible to say without invidious communication and gradually each age, bridges, gradients, and rights Roads in Ancient Times. comparison that the motor is assumed a share of the cost. Trace it where you will, through destined to play the most profound

Perhaps the impelling motive no the deathless epic of a Ulysses or dividual, since the fundamental recognized, that road development for the future.

part in the history of the in- the outset was the fact quickly Sagas of the Vikings of old; through principle which sets the motor car immediately reacted to the benefit the musty chronicles of historians apart from the others is that it of any community possessing them, of far off times, a world's story ives to each one of us separately It took little practical use of the discovery, adventure and if we so please, the ability to move motor vehicle to demonstrate that romance has for its basis, the when and where we wish, which is

as good roads were pushed out so much a part of our desires. aoncics of transportation.

from 1 town, the commerce The aneient runes of a Pre-Chris-

New Standards Made Possible.

centring in that place showed a Lian era in Sweden with their tale

marked increase. Coincidentally, of early road building; the golden zero milestone which stood in the our whims to the needs of the economic zone of production was We are no longer bound to suit as the farm hitherto outside the Forum of Rome, the Eternal City; majority. We can go at will, on made available, property values the "way marks" which survive schedule or off. We may stay on began to go up and as a result, from the beginnings of Old Eng the main track or we may diverge spirited rivalry ensued between land; these are but a few of the into by-paths. We can locate our centres of population all over the muto symbols of an ageless and homes further from our places of United States. t be the first to universal human desire for ways of employment and still be secure in have good roads communication.

the knowledge that doctor or grocer, milkman or fireman can come to as on call because they too can have motors. We can

Waste Spaces Conquered. Civilization and its hundimaiden

was

With a realization of these economic facts, since it evident that modern roads could not be built quickly from current

economists and government author Yet it is fully recognized by ities alike that with this tax, as all others, any undue burden on the individual taxpayer could only re- sult in stemming the use of tho vehicle and therefore of the govern- ment revenue.

Now that the body of taxpayers

one vehicle for each family in the is largely the same as the body of motor users, since we virtually have

of taxpayers, the question has he country and far from that number come largely one of which pocket the motorist or taxpayer desires to pay from...

Gasoline Tax Most Acceptable Form

Actually the motorist has been

to the government through increas more concerned with form of the lows that if the traffic becomes the principle that the tax should ed valuations. Inevitably, it fol-tax since the general acceptance of dense enough to justify surface on

not be unduly heavy. the road that the wealth of the com-

he undertaken without undue tax munity has increased to a point where the added improvement can

burdens.

"lifting ourselves by our boot- In homely way, we call this straps," and that is precisely what the United States has done.

Roads Create Wealth.

it is one frequently dwelt upon by I emphasize this point because

One outstanding result has been

the most equitable form of motor graduni shift to the gasoline tax as the most convenient and perhaps taxation. This tax, paid by the.. wholesalers, is simple of adminis- for collection, and enables the tration, costs the government little motorists to pay as he uses instead of all at one time.

In a country where all alike use the vehicle, and where first costs

time is an important item and as necessarily must be considered, this method of payment a little at a

Commerce, have ever followed the travel and in so doing can learn. funds in any considerable extent those who come to our country and a result there is a growing tendency great natural routes and it is only more about the problems of others without a heavy tax burden, the who think that we have been able to to gradually revert to a nominal

and so add to our own culture and to our humanity.

as modern invention has broken down physical barriers that we see the waste spaces yielding to man's) In a word, we can approach advance. To-day, the frozen areas standards of living which supreme of the North are no longer a sovereigns of a not far distant past mystery while the equally desiate would have envied us and in doing sands of the Sahara have been so we eurich not only ourselves shorn of much of their terror but our fellowmen. through new methods of transporia-

tion.

Man's craving for flexible and mobile means of movement has.

practise was resorted to authorizing bond issues to be paid for from the land taxes,

Highway Investment, not Expense.

registration fec identification plate with an increase for the annual in the gasoline tax to offect re venue losses so incurred.

A secondary advantage to this form of tax is that it constitutes use made as well as the mileage, a rough measure of the degree of

vehicle the more gasoline it con- heavier the

since naturally, the

sumes per mile.

General Taxes Make Development

Possible.

Travels Over Public Highway. Again the motor vehicle differs been met and in the giant systems from the railroad in that it is the of steamships and airplanes, rail-property of the individual and roads and motor vehicles which travels over the public rather than we have seen created in the last Since its use depends upon con- over restricted rights of way. Century, a new field of opportunity stant road development, the motor has been developed beyond even the imagination of those who have Vehicle has once more lifted the would have had to be sharply cur- they were plunging their fellow ally made available a large mileage

question of highway finance to a tailed. Distance has

place as one of the largest fiscal problems of the day.

gone before us. been obliterated by the magic touch of the Alladins of Transpor- tation bed nations have become neighbours in a degree which. would have been impossible to residents in adjoining towns, one hundred years ago,

THE B.M. W. TOURING MOTOR CYCLE

WHICH WON THE ITALIAN TARGA-FLORID RACE, 1927

12 B.H.P. MODEL R42 500 c.c.

"The new B.M.W. Touring Model represents the latest and most progressive form of engineering development applied to motor cycles:

In designing the R.42 model, it has been the maker's endeavour to procure with all possible expediency, every step of technical progress and every item of riding experience for the benefit of a wide circle of clients. The outcome of this endeavour has been to produce-

The most modern Touring Motor Cycle of the highest quality ever put on the market.

A FEW NOTABLE FEATURES

Engine entirely water and dust proof.

Double Frame throughout:

Increase of engine power to 12 brake horse power. Rims suitable for normal or balloon tyres.

All gearing effectively enclosed in oil-tight casings. The universally recognised advantages of shaft-drive. Bosch head and rear lights-Speedometer-Horn. All spare parts in stock in Hongkong.

May we give you further details of this super-motor cycle? If you are interested in the most luxurious two-wheeled machine in the world, please call or write for full specifications and particulars.

REDUCED PRICE H.K. $830.00

Sole Agents-CHIEN HSIN ENGINEERING CO. First Floor, Asiatic Building.

"I say "once more" because as I read the histories of early road building in Europear countries in the days before the invention of the steam engine, I cannot but be impressed with the. enormous improvement which your ancestors began long before Eric the Red and his son Leif the Lucky bad ever pioneered their way to the shores of our continent.

build highways because of our wealth. It is more nearly a fact, as can be adequately demonstrated to anyone who studies conditions in our country that we are wealthy because. we have built good roads. At the outset this practice found The changes which have taken objection on the ground that the place almost overnight of commun- interest and amortization costs ities revitalized into economic and were necessarily large and that the social life by improved transporta community could not afford to tion (and that is all the road and mortgage its funds in this way. vehicle are) are so numerous that If highway expenditures had volumes could be written about constituted simply a current ex them. this statement would have been munities at the outset whose off-the initial development of roads pense instead of an investment,

Yet there were few of these com- borne out and the road programme cials

Summing it up then, through. warned that from general taxes, we have gradu-

United States. of travelable highways in the phasis is placed on our mileage of While much en-

more miles that are not surfaced surfaced roads, we have made many and yet which are kept in condition. at low cost by constant mainten- ance. Because we have these roads, our fleet of motor vehicles" has able to shift the cost from property grown and as a result we have been and at the same time have given property taxpayers a large return from their initial investments in the value of their lands.

were

not

But one of the most interesting of the many-aided phases of high the United States is that summed way finance as demonstrated in up in the trenchant phrase of Tment means to them. H. MacDonald, able chief of the United States Burcaa of Public Roads; that "we pay for good roads whether we have them or not, and it is cheaper to build them than it is to go without them."

extravagance. To-day, these voices taxpayers into bankruptcy by their are lost in the demand of those who they know what highway improve want roads and more roads because

Land Values Enormously Increased,

In other words, the immediate effects in lower transportation costs, in heightened and values,, and the increase in production 'and' employment made possible by road

In this continuous development, may I say in passing, you have an | advantage not posscsed by us, in that throughout Continental Europe and the United Kingdom at least, there is a heritage of road foundations which will great ly lessen the cost still to be under-development so far exceed the taken in making these roads ade- quate for motor transportation.

Napoleon, Maria Theresa and other great rulers of their time still live in the highways which they have left behind them.

No Rigid Formula of Finance Proposed.

Motor Taxation for Road

Purposes.

which were adopted by our author- I have dwelt upon the policies iities at the outset of modern road building pointing out that at that time, the usual practice was to de- fray the costs from property taxes. either met from annual appropria- tions or more frequently by far, from bond issues.

In this development there has been no financial wizardry.

Went were faced by a need for more ade quate transportation facilities. Wo met that need through the best available means and formulated our policles later as a guide for the

Let me now point out a secondary stage in the development of our highway finance which has grown costs of road development as to to such dimensions as to outshadow ronder any rational system of all other sources of highway re-future. finance acceptable rather than avenue-that of, taxes

upon the

The experiment has proved to be continuance of poor roads or no vehicles themselves.

entirely sound because, to para- roads.

Here again we frequently en- phrase Lord Macauloy, we have counter the comment, that' road been dealing with an agency which building is comparatively easy to abridges distance and which accord- finance in the United States beingly means much to civilization. cause of the vast number of motor

What the future holds in store Again vehicles which we have.

no one can safely say." the effect is stated as a cause.

But it la my confident belief that as the other nations of the world develop their been resorted to as a means of eyetems of highway transportation, financing road development when we shall find these roads not only motor vehicles use first began or new ways to contentment and pros. even when road building began on perity for the individual but new large scale, we would to-day have ways to understanding and com- neither the vehicles nor the roads,merce between nations. because the cost per vehicle would have been so great that the public+++ not have purchased thern. Conse- roads would have been lacking. quently, the funds to build the

Vehicles not Source of Revenue at First.

So from one end of the United States to the other, local and state fiscal authorities joined in enact- ing bond issuas for the immediate improvement of roads and later, In any discussion of highway as it became apparent that roads finance, each of us must approach were an interstate and national as If motor vehicle revenues had the question from his own back-well as a state and local problem ground and I doubt if we can agree the Federal government added its in the final analysis on any one contribution, not in this case, programme of detail. Fiscal con- however, from bonds but from eur. ditions are always an outcome of rent appropriations. economic relations. Taxation is largely the product of historica! traditions, inertia and the play of political factors and in highway as

Traffic Surveys and Systems Imperative!

Because of the fact that the first

in others forms of public-finance, demand for road development was any rigid formulae are likely to be academic.

a local one, the first error which

Out of the practical experience we were lead into was a hodge- which has been forced upon our

podge improvement of our high- government officials, however, by ways without regard for any inter- the enormous demand for public wait for a rational survey of our relation. The public would not

purposes. It was not until 1910 that graduated registration fees states and it was not until a much were generally imposed by the Inter date that the fees began to assume any proportions,

As a matter of public record, re- gistration fees were first collect- highways, which has grown up in traffic needs and it was not untied from motor vehicle ownera not the United States during the past 1921 that amendments were passed therefrom, but in order to identify from any desire to derive revenue twenty-five years, certain policies, both of administration and of to the Federal act which made the vehicle and its driver for police administration and of finance, have mandatory upon the states desir- come to be adopted which willing Federal aid, that they should perhaps be of interest to you and first lay out state systems. a knowledge of which will enable With this legislation, there has you to avoid the many and costly rapidly grown a realization of the mistakes which we were forced to basic fact that as a precedent to make during the development

highway construction there should

When motor vehicle taxation did first be a traffic survey which will begin it was only after a general period.

show where the road should go, public acceptance of the vehicle as what traffic it may have to carry an agency in transportation and and the character of the traffic because the users found that it was With this as guide, it then becomes cheaper to pay a road tax than a possible for any division of the mud tax, not only because operating government to determine how costs were lower, but because a many miles of highway will be wider use could be made of the The first was so brief that our needed, what type of highway, vehicle, government had scarcely engaged gradient, right of way, and so upon the task of building through forth, will best meet each condi- motive took over the field of priations will be necessary in order Out of the demand of the motor- stage coach routes when the loco- tion, and finally what total appro- the improvement transportation. Consequently, for to carry on many years the only roads built economically and with the regard ists themselves, then, there gra were local in character and either for other public financial require-dially grew up a recognition of the paid for by the common labour of ments. Necessarily this implies fact that the motorist derived a residents of a town, from the local centralized engineering control. treasuries, or were built by toll road companies.

our

Three Periods of Highway Dovelopment. Highway construction in country falls into three periods, that preceding the development of the steam engine, the bicycle age,

and the motor age.

Bicycles brought the first urge for improved roads and it is an interesting reflection that the

papers of the day commented at

Roads Built by Stages. Since the day when highway building began in earnest, how ever, there never has been a time

Special Taxes Low and Used for Roads.

special benefit from road improve- ment over and beyond the general public benefit. This has now cry- Atallized into the viewpoint that motor taxes are all right so long as they are devoted to road improve- ment purposes and so long as they

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