The 'new boy' bows in
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by Paul Moody
• "No change" seemed to be the message conveyed in the speech made by Mr. Richard Marsh, the new Minister of Transport, at the opening of the Transportation Engineering Conference at the Central Hall, Westminster, on Tuesday.
" I am not", he said, "particularly concerned with any specific form of transport. I am not a bus man, or a train man, or a car man". It did not matter, he said, whether specific forms of transport were successful or not: the primary purpose of his job was to ensure the "total mix of transport in the country".
"Integration", said Mr. Marsh, "is vital for the whole of the national transport system. The only alternative in our towns and cities is mere chaos" As must have been expected, the new Minister has inherited from his predecessor a reverence for and belief in the future of the PTA. We would have in London, he said, the situation where, when the control of London Transport had been transferred to the GLC, the same people would be responsible for the city's transport ,system and for the planning of the city's roads. He hoped that this centralization of control would spread after the results of the Royal Commission on Local Government had been made public, "Strong planning", he contended, "must be the basis for our transport system". Integration, however, was not, he stressed, a political dogma.