Many Scottish services in danger
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• The Scottish Traffic Commissioners were to hear applications yesterday by the Scottish Bus Group to permit complete withdrawal of 12 rural services in the Border Counties, Believed to be the largest single number of withdrawals proposed, they include six services from Kelso, three from Duns and three from Selkirk.
The Scottish Bus Group has indicated that the routes involved are completely uneconomic and that it cannot continue to operate as the Group is not making sufficient surplus on industrial area routes to allow continued subsidy of rural routes. The Border authorities can retain such services as they think necessary if they are prepared to pay a subsidy.
More Scottish rural services in danger of being withdrawn were outlined to Ayr County Council by Mr John Curran, a member of the council and a TGWU official, when he said that 73 of the 131 Western SMT services in the county were losing money. He asked the council to meet the Western, to propose a stay of withdrawals of service on the understanding that the council would assist under the 1968 Act. Three services alone accounted for annual losses of £40,000 and these would be withdrawn.