OBC in parking dispute
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• Parking tickets have been handed out to Oxford Bus Company drivers at Oxford's Gloucester Green bus station in a dispute over the use of bays while reconstruction work takes place. The council is rebuilding the station and some of the bays used by OBC have been blocked off. Local council officials have allegedly tried to move coaches on, even though OBC maintains that sometimes there is nowhere for them to go during busy periods.
Managing director, Arthur Townsend, says: "We hoped that there would be give and take while reconstruction was taking place," adding that the council's commercial policy has already driven away some of the local smaller operators whc were being asked to pay up to 60 pence per departure. His company has to pay £16,000 a year for the use of three bays at the bus station.
He has had a meeting with the council highways subcommittee who, he says, were sympathetic, but he admits that OBC drivers, and others, have been given parking tickets in the city centre, where regulations are "very strict".