London's Coach Services a Public Asset.
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TN addition to reducing the frequency of Lon-I-don coach services, the Metropolitan Traffic Commissioner is imposing conditions which will remove more than half of their usefulness to the public. He proposes to locate the London coach termini just outside the central area, and states that the inconvenience caused will not be greater than that involved in using the rail services. That inconvenience, it may be said, is in practice quite severe. Also he is permitting only two other pick-up points in the Metropolitan Area.
The first condition reduces greatly the valueof the outward services, and the second eliminates the usefulness of the inward services for all except the few people travelling to and from places close to the two pick-up points. The time taken to reach one of those points will, in many cases, be as long as that for the coach journey.
That, briefly, is the effect upon the travelling public, and, whilst the hardship to operating companies will be great, one is bound first to consider the public need. The trouble is that the public has, so far, no effective voice at the Commissioners' sittings, either in this or in any other Traffic Area. The daily Press does not sufficiently appreciate the importance of these matters to the people of the country, and it is remarkable what the public will suffer in silence until its active interest is aroused.
Criticism must be constructive, and we hold that, provided the frequency on each of the routes is limited to requirements evidenced by recent traffic figures, and that stopping places of coaches and motorbuses be kept separate— even by so short a distance as 100 yds.—the coach traffic In central London will be found to cause no serious congestion.
The London coaches are used to a considerable extent for business purposes, and in the past year or two the convenience of their central departure and arrival points, and the fact that they can be boarded almost anywhere have, coupled with the comfort, celerity and inexpensiveness of their service, come to be looked upon as constituting a boon which the public could obtain only from road transport. To reduce their efficiency in any way is to hamper London's commercial and social progress.