Move to Cut Down Tours S HOULD a tour be deleted
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from a licenco if an operator has not run it for a year or two? This question was raised at a sitting of the Yorkshire Traffic Commissioners, at Huddersfield, last week, when licence applications by tour operators were under consideration,
Appearing for a number of applicants, Mr. W. R. Hargrave submitted arguments against any reduction in the number of his clients' tours. There existed a measure of control, he said, by the Commissioners specifying the number of vehicles which the operator was entitled to run. If, in addition, a licence holder were to be subjected to a gradual attrition of the number of tours by a reduction of the choice which he could offer to the public, he ran a great risk of having to conduct an uneconomic business, or having to close down his business altogether. His (Mr. Hargrave's) clients felt that the time had come to call a halt to that form of restriction.
Mr. Hargrave also asked that the period of operation—generally from just before Easter and continuing until the beginning of October—should not be cut down.
For the objecting railway companies, Mr. P. Kershaw submitted that if a tour had not been worked for a year or two, it should not remain on a licence, because there was evidently no need for it. If the need should reappear, the tour would, no doubt, find its way back on to the licence.
Apparently, remarked Mr. Kershaw, Mr. Hargrave believed that by the contraction of the number of vehicles and tours, the death knell of operators would be sounded. This idea was fallacious. The railways did not ask for hardships to be placed on any one; they merely asked that needs should be served.