ABSTRACT
In many rural areas the need for better transport facilities is immediate and urgent, but the amount of traffic available is generally insufficient to justify the construction of a railway or even a light railway or "agrail." Topographical and other reasons usually render the steam tramway—a familiar method of transport in the rural areas of France, Belgium and other Continental countries—an impossible solution in Great Britain, even if the traffic available were sufficient otherwise to justify such an undertaking. The flexibility of road transport is of great importance in country districts, for a road vehicle can stop anywhere, and can thus provide better facilities to farms, hamlets and villages not within appreciable distance of a station, than can the railways. The motor bus has also given good service in providing transport facilities to and from those isolated industrial centres that are sometimes met with, in otherwise rural districts.
