May 26.
Tr is to be regretted that the demands made upon a modern|§ daily newspaper are such as to preclude any idea of publishing in full the extremely interesting lecture that Mr. McColl delivered yesterday evening. before the Civic League on the,, subject of Shanghai's trafic problem. To have done so would have been to devote the better part of two pages to this one subject, and so the réswné which appears in another place must serve. If in that abridgement the points of the lecturer's carefully prepared work ar Suficiently emphasized it will serve its purpose, and, it is hoped, awaken those of a civic turn of mind in Shanghai—there are, alas, too few—to the congestion of traffic and the consequently insufficient transport which is one of the burdens under which Shanghai labours at the present time. The facts brought out in the lecture, other than those included in the resume indicate that Shanghai makes a greater showing than either Glasgow or Chicago in the matter of car miles tun per mile of tramway route, and that whereas Glasgow} carries over five million passengers per mile of tramway route per annum, and Chicago nearly two and a half millions, Shanghai carries seven millions. This is due to a number of causes, not the least of which is the woefully ismail total of length of the! Shanghai tramway system, hav-{ ing in view the population of the district it serves. Indeed when the figures are considered it is remarkable that the Tramway) Company does so well with the limited means at its disposal.
Yet admitting all the difficulties that Mr. McColl finds in the topography of the International Settlement, admitting that unfortunate bottle-necks do stifle free movement of vehicular trafthat in the midst of an almost/ fic, especially the tram-car, it is, district for which Mr. yet a little difficult to agree that comparisons should always be drawn between this and western cities. The comparatively recent growth of Shanghai, the fact that it grew rather than was planned, and that a stage has now been reached when the rectification of former errors must necessarily entail more expense than can be met with sufficient readiness to secure a prompt amelioration of present conditions, leads to the conclusion that any proposal for so doing must be viewed with the greatest possible care. In the abstract it is impossible to do anything but agree with what Mr. McColl argues. It is true that within the Settlement much could be done in the opening up of more thoroughfares to, the tramway system, but this would be at such a price that it is not even open to question whether the municipality should go to such an expense, the immediate pecuniary benefit of which would accrue to the company: holding the tramway monopoly. This is especially true when it is assumed that, within its present limits, Shanghai has probably attained the penultimate stages of its growth—that, as it stands at present, there is not much room for the further development of the Settlement within its borders.
It is probably the recognition of that fact which underlies Mr. McColl's plea for the unification of administration of districts outside the. International Settlement. If this means the inclusion of all existing tramway systems in Shanghai under one control with -a view to extending into the outlying country, thereby opening up more residential districts for Jabour, which at present has insufficient houses in Shanghai, the principle underlying the suggestion is to be commended. On the other hand, however, the practical difficulties are almost insuperable. Apart from the objection against thus creating gigantic monopoly, a most unpopular move, a number of considerations arise operating against any such scheme. Without extension of the Settlement beyond bounds which have never yet been publicly advocated, it would necessitate the operation of this large system under at least two different jurisdictions, with all the difficulties attendant thereon, and unless the ratepayers did see fit to make those improvements in the central McColl
Text read from the printed page and cleaned; old type leaves the occasional error.