| Show PUBLIC BRIDGES ASK FERRY BO its ITS f 10 0 EAISE RAISE FARES A curious and perhaps unprecedented situation has ans aris en in san francisco where two ta great publicly owned bridges spanning the bay have recently been built before the day of the bridges san francisco commuters were nere served for two gen erat orations ions by a ferry system which carried passengers and auto mobiles from the city to all other bay points the ferry tern tem privately owned and publicly regulated represents private investment and must pay its own way in addition to meeting heavy taxes the new competition of the tax free bridges cans catis ed the ferries to lose the great bull of their passengers final ly they sought and obtained permission to reduce their fares from to a trip now the publicly owned and tax exempt bridges corn com plain that the low ferry rates are cutting into the bridge business and asking that the ferries be forced by law to raise their charges to quote the san francisco chronicle we are familiar with instances in which public ownership by using the public credit escaping taxation and filling falling back on tax payers to pay deficits has driven private ownership to the wall in this in stance it is argued that private ownership can be compelled to charge rates high enough to drive tway business go into bank and leave a monopoly to its public ownership owne iship campeti tor here is an entirely new theody of rate making which asks in effect that publicly owned businesses backed by the money of all tax payers be allowed to destroy a private company to escape competition it demands that where a private business takes patronage from publicly owned business lu 1 siness the private company should be compelled to increase us ils charged to the point where it loses all its fiade one main argument for the establishment of the publicly owned bridges was to reduce ferry lates for the they have succeeded and what hat are they kicking about this is one foi fol ripley s believe it or not column |
