Operating
Page 53
If you've noticed an error in this article please click here to report it so we can fix it.
Asfleas of
Passenger Transport
MUST PROVE NEED AFTER 17 YEARS!
ACASE in which illegality was alleged to have extended over many years, was heard before the Western Traffic Commissioners at Barnstaple, last week.
Mr. W. T. S. Crook, of the Lorna Doone Garage, Goodleigh, North Devon, applied for a licence to allow the introduction of single fares of less than Is. on his service, which ran once a week from Loxhore to Goodleigh and Barnstaple. Mr. Crook said that he had been charging single fares and had no idea that he had not applied for a licence to do so.
The chairman said that if the Commissioners had received a report that Mr. Crook was charging single fares without the proper licence, a prosecution would have followed.
Mr. Crook: " I have been charging the single fare since about 1920."
It was inexcusable, declared the chairman, for the applicant to have conducted the service irregularly for such a length of time. The objectors submitted that he had not shown need for the service, and with that yiew the Commissioners agreed. They, however, thought it a somewhat extraordinary attitude for the Southern National Omnibus Co., Ltd„ to adopt in objecting after 17 Years.
The application was adjourned for Mr. Crook to prove need,
SIXTH ROUND OF DOUBLEDECXER STRUGGLE.
ASIXTH full-dress debate on the question of substituting doubledeck buses for single-deckers to obviate the necessity of so much duplication was staged at a sitting of the NorthWestern Traffic Commissioners, in Manchester, last Friday.
In this instance, Mr. J. Lustgarten, for the North-Western Road Car Co., Ltd., confined all his arguments to a specific route, that from Manchester to Hayfield. One of the difficulties of the traffic was that hikers started at all hours and all wanted to come home by the last bus, but the country end of the route had been officially condemned as unsuitable for double-deckers Mr. Lustgarten said that much had been done in the way of road widening and tree lopping, but the lamps, which were regarded in parts of the route as hazards, remained. Notwithstanding the fact that the applicant company paid as much as £26,500 in licensing duties, it was asked _to pay to the local councils concerned as much as £20 per lamp for the removal of the posts to safer places.
These lamp-posts could be regarded as dangerous only if judged from the standard of incompetent driving. This route had been used successfully by double-deckers 10 years ago, when the vehicles were less safe than to-day, and, experimentally, double-deckers had been tried again recently.
Mr. W. Chamberlain, chairman of the Commissioners, said that he personally as final arbiter would go over the route.
BRISTOL DEAL COMPLETED.
BRISTOL Corporation has made arrangements to complete the purchase of the tramways undertaking to-day (October 1). The scheme for joint ownership with the Bristol Tramways and Carriage Co., Ltd., of the tramways and city bus services is now in operation.