Women endangered coach licence
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• Forty women who normally travelled on two or three buses to work at an East Kilbride factory hired a bus one week to make their journey more quickly and cheaply and, thereby, unwittingly endangered the coach operator's licence.
At a sitting of the Traffic Commissioners in Glasgow last week, the coach operator, Mr G. Paterson of Glasgow Road, Burnbank, was informed by the chairman, Mr A. B. Birnie, that he could have been in danger of losing his licence.
Mr Paterson said he now understood that point, but at the time it had merely been a business transaction.
In evidence, one of the women, Mrs Mary Murphy of Cambu slang, said she had to catch a bus at 6.40 am and travel on three different buses' to reach her work in time. In the evening she stopped work at 4.29 pm and did not arrive home until 6.10 pm. Her fares cost 35s (£1.75) a week. When she travelled by Mr Paterson's bus she caught it at 7.15 am and she arrived home, after work, at 5 pm. The fare for this service was £.1 a week.
An agent for Central SMT Co said that existing bus services could take the women to work, but he agreed that several changes of bus would be involved. His company had, in the past, been asked to provide a direct service but had considered the traffic did not warrant it, although on the evidence produced at the sitting he agreed that his company would now be willing to consider providing such a service.
The Commissioners granted Mr Paterson a licence to operate an express service between Cambuslang and East Kilbride for the sole purpose of taking the 40 women to and from their work at College Milton,