Government Wary on Rural Bus Subsidies
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FROM OUR POLITICAL CORRESPONDENT IT now seems highly unlikely that the Government will introduce a scheme to assist rural buses by means of joint Treasury and local authority subsidies, as recommended in the Jack report.
The view being taken, I understand, is that the introduction of such subsidies could snowball until subsidization became the rule rather than the exception, and the Government is not ready to apply this principle.
However, Ministers are in favour of taking steps to. ensure that but services which run in place of newly-closed railway lines are efficient and adequate.
A statement is likely to be made in the next few weeks outlining what is proposed in this field, though it must be said that financial assistance—if any—will be very marginal indeed when viewed against the whole field of rural transport.
The Government is looking at the rest of the problem in an unorthodox way. It is trying to discover whether the private car can be harnessed to public transport by altering the restrictions which prevent a car owner from receiving a " consideration " for taking other people to work and on other necessary journeys.
No firm decision has been taken on this plan, which is being looked at together with the less-favoured suggestion that small operators should be allowed more freedom to start up new services—a move which might lead to withdrawals of lessremunerative services by the bigger operators,