'Madness' to swallow PTAs
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• The suggestion that the new metropolitan areas proposed by the Royal Commission on Local Government should merely swallow up existing Passenger Transport Authorities was described as madness by Mr. C. T. Dabell, chairman of the Passenger Vehicle Operators Association, during his address to the Association's a.g.m. on Tuesday.
Mr. Dabell described the move to reduce the London Transport area to correspond to the boundaries of the Greater London Council so as to make the administration of transport services more manageable. The proposed metropolitan areas were far larger, or disjointed, compared with Greater London and it would be a direct contradiction of present policy to regard them as suitable units for passenger transport administration, he said.
Although fundamentally opposed to PTAs actually responsible for operation of transport services, the PVOA had always accepted that some reorganization would be necessary when local government was reformed. "However, the passenger transport industry would be failing in its duty to the public if it did not issue a clear warning that this particular proposal would only make it more difficult to provide adequate bus services," said Mr. Dabell.
He also referred to the choice of people with no administrative experience of passenger transport operation to head the new Executives. The appointment of the first two director-generals clearly indicated the danger of theory being preferred to practical experience.
"I suggest that recent years have amply demonstrated that the country cannot be run on theory alone. So far as passenger transport is concerned, a halt must be called before even greater damage is done to the service provided for the travelling public," he stated.