[LINK] The Red Flag Act

Marghanita da Cruz marghanita at ramin.com.au
Mon Jun 27 14:12:54 AEST 2011


Glen Turner wrote:
>> A famous example of this is the Locomotives Act of 1865 in the United Kingdom,
>>  better known as the Red Flag Act. It was a law that limited the speed of the
>> new so-called automobile to 2 miles per hour in urban areas, and required them
>>  to always have a crew of three: a driver, a stoker (!), and a man who would
>> walk before the automobile waving a red flag (!!).
> 
> Anyone else find this nowhere near as remarkable as the author does.
> We're talking about and age where nothing moved faster than 10mph, where
> the width of a horseway was 8 feet, where the dominant technology were
> animals easily spooked by noise, and a new mechanical device that was a
> proven killer of the innocent (and continues to be so to this day).
> 
> Motor vehicles were not yet the transportation of the masses, and
> wouldn't begin to become so for another 50 years. They were the toys of
> rich enthusiasts.
> 
> Sure, the legislation looks odd to modern eyes. And odder to US eyes,
> with its straight wide turnpikes not possible in populated England. And
> sure, it is an overreaction to the actual issues. But to paint it as the
> result of industry lobbying rather than a reaction of horror to the
> obvious possibilities of injury requires argument and references to
> sources, not assertion.
> 

I started to glaze over a the "plight" of the car... here is another 
perspective:
> Closure
> The Sydney tram system was Australia's largest, at 290 km, in 1933. But because the system consisted of several isolated sections, it was relatively easy to close it down, piece by piece. This process started in 1939 with the Manly system. The last Pitt St. and Castlereigh St. tram ran in 1957 on a Saturday night at 1 am. Within minutes of the tram's run the overhead wires were pulled down, and the next morning (a Sunday) the tracks were paved over, to ensure there would be no return of the trams even if the buses should prove inadequate. This shows pretty clearly that there were forces at work other than just desire for efficiency here.
> 
> By 1958 the North Shore system was closed, and in 1961, 100 years after the first tram had run, the last line closed.
> 
> The replacement buses were loss-making from the start, and within just a few years the City Council was starting to regret the loss of the trams, but it was too late. In 1975, a proposal was floating to re-instate a tram loop from Central Station to Circular Quay along Pitt and Castlereigh Streets. In 1995, this proposal has re-appeared, attached to the Darling Harbour LRV plan.
<http://www.railpage.org.au/tram/sydhist.html>

Marghanita
-- 
Marghanita da Cruz
http://ramin.com.au
Tel: 0414-869202





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