IN YOUR OPINION
Page 78
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Another Red Herring?
I NATURALLY appreciated the recent article under the
above heading, and must congratulate Mr. Tilsley on his courage. The question of whether this was a valid application never arose at the hearing of the case in the Northern area and was not mentioned by the president of the Tribunal until about the end of the appeal. Naturally counsel had no instructions on this.
• The application was quite valid because when the amended application was submitted, in March, the vehicle that was specified did not hold a carrier's licence in any other area. The confusion which I strongly resent was that the original application was made in December, 1963. It was published in January, 1964, and that application was to acquire two vehicles and two trailers which was listed for hearing on March 4; the company was notified on March 3 that this hearing had been adjourned. No reasons were given for this adjournment.
In February, 1964, the company put on a new vehicle and had a new licence disc issued for this, at which time they surrendered the old disc to the N.W. Licensing Authority.
The vehicle taken off the A licence was then completely reconditioned. The application was then amended to read: "One tractor unit in possession and one to acquire." When the application was heard at Durham in June, 1964, the L.A. at first insisted that the application had only been made in March, but this matter" was immediately clarified and so I leave it to your imagination how I felt in December to hear statements made about the validity of the application.
To me it was just one more " red herring ". All I c4/ would like published now is that everything this company has done for the last three years has been well known to both the Northern and the North Western L.A.s. I am quite sure that for a company with two vehicles, this one has had more inspection and investigation in three years than any other in the country. Bureaucracy at its worst!
South Bank, H. L. WALKER, Middlesbrough. (Chairman) A. T. Booth (Manchester) Ltd.
More Convenient but. . .
IN his letter of January 8, Mr. Dix, a layman as he him' self admits, quite effectively raises a question which is one of many problems facing us in the road passenger transport industry.
While a 10-minute service with one-man operated 12-seaters is obviously more convenient than an hourly service with 72-seaters, this is not nearly so simple a thing to do as laymen think.
First, the staff required is increased threefold (assuming the conductors on the 72-seaters could all be trained to drive and operate the one-man minibuses), and p.s.v. drivers do not grow on trees these days.
Then again, there is still the increase in traffic at peak periods ter be catered for. Here the 72-seater proves its worth, but in Mr. Dix's scheme it appears to me that two types of vehicle would be required, one for off-peak and the other for the peak periods.
I do not see the relevance of the remark about working out roadside timetables, but I hope that laymen like Mr. Dix will now see our side of things more in perspective.
Leamington Spa. J. R. G. BUCKLE.