THE METROPOLITAN COMMISSIONER ON LONDON COACH TRAFFIC
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Mr. Gleeson Robinson Gives His Reasons for Excluding Coaches from the Central Area T AST week the Traffic Commissioner Lifor the Metropolitan Area issued a statement of the grounds for his decisions, announced on page 570 of our issue dated November 24th, 1931, for excluding motor coaches which operate between London and outer suburbs and towns from entering the central area.
In the first place, he dealt with the question sometimes asked as to why coaches should be excluded when other vehicles are permitted to enter. He claims not to have adopted a merely preferential or restrictive policy, but to have considered whether it is the proper function of what he describes as the express bus to enter central London.
In his opinion, such part of the Population as lives on the line of route of the suburban railways should be encouraged to adopt railway transport, the proper function of the .suburban motor coach being to supplement the railways. These coaches, he says, are express vehicles, and the last part of their inward joterney is uneconomical and needlessly congests the road. For this reason he has decided that sueh vehicles should run to appropriate points on the fringe of the central area. If, he says, these be further delay in regulating coach traffic, the creation of proper coach stations and facilities will not keep pace with the gradual increase of the traffic as would be the case if it were at once dealt with on the right lines.
Mr. Gleeson Robinson says that the difficulty of introducing a reform of this kind tends to be greatly increased if exceptions he made. He has, however, permitted within the central area motor coaches conveying sightseers, because the very purpose of such traffic is in the central area. On the other hand, he has not been able to treat_ in the same way coaches conveying sightseers to
places like Windsor and Hampton Court, partly because such coaches compete with the regular services. Further, it has not been possible to permit coaches to pick up foreign tourists at their hotels because the parties collected are frequently small, necessitating the running of vehicles almost empty through the busiest parts of London.
An exception has been made in the case of services conveying organized parties with luggage between hotels and stations and the docks ; also in the ease of organized parties with luggage coming from distant points, such as Birmingham, and travelling straight to one hotel.
The Commissioner concludes by stating : "I have decided that, subject to the exceptions stated, all road-service licences which I have hitherto granted t.hall not authorize operations in the central area of London. The longer the application of sucha policy is delayed, the more difficult it will become to enforce it."