Firms bid to end T tree tours
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FREE FARES on express services for coach passengers joining extended tours came under the microscope at a joint meeting of the Metropolitan, Eastern and South-Eastern Traffic Commissioners at Acton last week.
National Travel (SouthEast) applied for permission to carry such passengers free, while Wallace Arnold and other coach operators maintained that passengers on express services should pay the proper fare for that service.
Wallace Arnold wanted the traffic commissioners to impose an exclusion on the express service licenses under consideration, to prevent National Travel (South-East) from carrying free passengers on tours.
National Travel (SouthEast) general manager, John Wilson, said the application before the commissioners was a pilot one and if agreed would be extended to all express services.
But the main submission in the National Travel case was that they did not in fact need the permission of the Traffic Commissioners to give away free tickets on express services.
Mr Morgan for National Travel (SE) said that if the commissioners were also of this opinion they should refuse the application. National Travel could then continue giving away free tickets as they had done in the past. Only if the s,;(rimissioners were of 1+-1 opinion that special 1mission was in fact ne-Lued to give away express service tickets should the application be granted, said Mr Morgan.
Wallace Arnold maintained that the whole tours licensing system would become a nonsense if the free carriage of tour passengers on express services was allowed. It would mean in fact that National could offer tours from any point, without asking the commissioners for permission.
Wallace Arnold was supported in this submission by Dons Tours, Glenton Tours and Norfolk Motor Services.
Mr Wilson said that before National Travel had been formed, it was the practise of Eastern National, Southdown, and Maidstone and District to carry free passengers on tours on express services and no objections to this practice had ever been made before.
In all cases, the express service "fare" was internally deducted from the tours account and credited to the express service account.
In the 1976 season, some 6,000 free express service tickets had been issued to tour passengers in this way.
There was nothing to stop Wallace Arnold or other operators buying National express tickets, or even British Rail tickets and giving these away free to tour passengers, said Mr Wilson.
Sir Frank Marshall speaking for Wallace Arnold maintained the company knew nothing about National express tickets being given away until the publication of the National Travel 1976 tours brochure — and it had then taken the first opportunity to object.
National maintained that this free travel facility had been implied in tours brochures as far back as the early 'sixties.
The traffic commissioners Withdrew to consider the case and reserved their decision.