PASSENGER TRAVEL NEWS.
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ANY enterprise which sets out to lighten the operators' burden of booking organization is worthy of the support and assistance of the operators themselves. Where a concern is undertaking through booking of any kind, it is obvious that it cannot flourish unless It has the backing of users all over the country in order to give its patrons among the public adequate travelling facilities in any districts which may be concerned.
A praiseworthy effort to co-ordinate booking traffic in a comprehensive way is now being made by All-Britain Road Travel Bookings, Ltd., 5-6, Red Lion Square, London, W.0.1. This concern not only books through passengers on various services, but is endeavouring to obtain the support of sufficient bus companies and Municipal passenger-transport departments working on local routes to enable patrons to be booked to intermediate destinations and to. places lying off the beaten track, as it were at which the limited-stop coaches do not set down or take up passengers.
A special booklet of tickets, which also contains a form of itinerary, is issued to each passenger .enabling him or her to make the journey to the destination by both long-distance coach and local bus. This • arrangement is DOW established on a practical basis and satisfactory backing is beginning to make itself evident.
It should, of course, be understood that All-Britain Road Travel Bookings, Ltd., is an entirely independent company, directed by men who have experience of this class of work, so that operators may be sure of impartial and, we should imagine, satisfactory treatment.
Apart from this side of its activities, the company is establishing a large central information bureau, which will be equipped so as to enable any interested member of the public to obtain details concerning running times, fares, etc., of; it is claimed, any bus or coach service operated in the United Kingdom. This information, with, of course, the aid of operators, will be kept up to date, and local booking agents will be interested to know that a scheme is being prepared
under which those agents participating will be supplied with a compact filing cabinet containing this information in a condensed form on index cards. This enables them to give full particulars in answer to inquiries, which, we know, they are now not always able to do.
It is proposed eventually to establish information bureaux in various centres in Great Britain. At present, however, the information services—in the same way as the booking arrangements—are to be controlled centrally from the concern's London office.