The Bridgeport evening farmer., 1915-04-09
JITNEY VS. TROLLEY
 NEW TRANSIT ISSUE
Invasion of Nickel Auto Ride Said to Menace Electric
 Service.
eNew York Evening Post)

transit problems in the form Of business which can be run at a profit or whether it is a temporary experi- ment on the part of people insuffi ciently familiar with the respohsfoi1- ities and costs of maintaining a transportation service. not to be con- sidered by managers of existing en- terprises as a vital factor in the field these are questions which have been troubling tke minds of trans portation men recently, in the face of the sudden spread of five-cent public. automobile service through the country.
 Few people who are not concern ed in the, apparently simple and ac- tualIy complicated undertaking of carrying people from one part of a city to another, on regular and quick schedule, have given serious though to the development of the jitney bus service. They have heard ishing1y in the west and are inclined to think that if they could be carried from their work to their homes in autom obiIes for five cents, they would be glad of 8 chance. They have prob aba1y heard that t-jitney'' is another vernacu1ar synonym for a nickel, and that the word is supposed to have been coined either in the south among negroes, or to have come into use among circus bankers as a good term
 
 What the general meaning and results of the attempt to run fve-cent auto mobile lines may be, they have had little reason to consider; and so long as they gain the immediate end of being carried where they want to go, with a seat in a car for such 8 small price, they would probably prefer not to be bothered to consider.
 Menace to Trolley Service
 The immediate consi iteration which most concerns the public is that the institution of jitney automobile ser vice is, temporarily at least, a serious blow at the esta ablished electric car lines A man named J. Parsons, in Los Angeles which claims to be the city Of the ord gina1 jitney, is credited with having sown the first seed of the jitney harvest last summer, by mark ing a little Ford with a sign read ing Eighth and Broadway to Row an Street., Boyle Heights, 5c." Peo- pie laughed; but Parsons prospered- Then more jitneys appeared. People laughed in other cities when the first man took up the idea; but soon San Francisco, Seattle, Wash: Portland, Kansas City, Houston, and more cit ies were witnessing the institution of am unforeseen transit service. The idea spread through the middle west to the east, to Baltimore, Phi1adel- p11ia, Hartford, Springeld, and at
 
 number the cities which have the ser vice on trial, because new ones are being added every day. A transpor- tation expert has predicted that the height Of the tide will be reached this summer, and that after thatsthe pressure of real business conditions which will begin to be realized will. force it naturally to recede.
 For the electric street railways and the higher priced bus lines, the claim has been made that the Jitney means a piratical inroad in the most profitable sphere of the present sys- tems without the burdens and pub- lie duties which they carry, and without the necessity of maintaining long, losing lines into outlying dis tricts, which the more heavily used lines support. On the other hand. upon business ignorance and an eco-s homie fa1lacy, and will not need to be regarded as a. dangerous competi- tor when the pressure of bong-term operation costs is felt
 Tho test of right will come as the 5itney bus endeavors to justify itself as an economic undertaking, under the necessity of meeting all the costs of a permanent business; discharging public responsi bilities satisfactorily, and paying profit which will in duce people to stay in it. Represen-t tatives of other forms of transporta- ton admit that if the five-cent bus can demonstrate that it offers a bet ter way of carrying the big city crowds on a money making basis, off the streets in the face of the pulp lie demand, which can easily be aroused by a little judicious publicity. It is just here, however, that they maintain that it is doomed to fall. The one vital argument that the five I- cannot be permanently paying prop erty.
 Questions for Jftney Owners
 A strong point that the opponents of the jftney system repeatedly, as- sert is that the people who have rushed into the business in cities from the Pacific to the Atlantic mendous percentage of depreciation which they will have to consider in the heavy wear and tear on their cars It is all very we'll, they con tend, for an individual owning a car to begin carrying people about the streets, and, discounting only the cost of gasoline, calculate that he is making an easy fortune at the rate of five cents a. passenger.
 The jitney service has sprung up as a, natural sequel of a Nperiod of business depr ession. People with cars lost their employment, and it occurred to them that they might better be making a little money than nothing at all. So the cars were put in service. As soon business re- wives along old lines and jitney op orators measure the real costs of their new occupation, they. are likely to end it.
 A mechanical expert, studying re- gently the costs of automobile oper- ation as an important and little con- sidered new phase of national ex- pense, discovered that one man who owned a S20O0 car and ran it for 30,0000 miles paid for his riding, in cluding the wages of a driver and the costs of tires and repairs, and an allowance for lost VaIue in wear and tear, at the rate of about 37 cents