Commissioners spotlight 'bad feeling' among operators
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BAD feeling among passenger operators in the mid-Shropshire area was referred to by the chairman of the West Midland Traffic Commissioners, Mr. J. Else, last week. He was referring to acute rivalry "amounting very nearly if not actually" to hostility between some operators in the area and H. Brown and Sons.
Whether the rivalry or hostility was the responsibility of Brown and Sons or the group was not for the Commissioners to say, said Mr. Else. But it was certainly clouding the issue of almost every application that came before the Commissioners from that area. "It is most regrettable and inevitably must react to the detriment of the public in the long term."
Mr. Else was giving an oral decision on applications by Brown and Sons, who asked for certain additional picking-up points on their existing licence for a period excursion to Margate, and Wrekin Coach Services Ltd. (an amalgam of certain other operators in the mid-Shropshire area) to add to their existing period excursion facilities, granted a year ago, a period excursion to Margate. A grant to Brown and Sons was made, but the Wrekin application was refused.
Period excursions, in the opinion of the Commissioners, were more akin to express services, said Mr. Else, than the ordinary day excursion and tour. It was not uncommon to find express services operating over or picking up in an area in which the licence holder had no other interest whatever.
The Commissioners were quite clear on the evidence that Brown and Sons were the proper persons to provide any additional facilities to Margate which the Commissioners felt were required from the area. They believed that it was in the public interest and in the interests of co-ordination that picking-up points at Brosely and Ironbridge should be granted so that the pattern of the picking-up points would be similar to those of Wrekin.
Wrekin's application was not supported by evidence, said Mr. Else. They were not operators to Margate at present, and as to the existing or established operator principle, a principle which should be sparingly applied, that did not apply in the circumstances of this particular case.
Mini-buses for economy?
A SUGGESTION that the Thames Valley 'Traction Co. Ltd. should operate mini-buses on routes where it was uneconomic to operate ordinary buses—because of the few passengers carried—was made last week by the estates and general purposes committee of Newbury Town Council (Berks).
The committee has asked the bus company to consider its idea before it formulates plans for curtailing services.
Meanwhile, improvements are to be made to the town bus service as a result of concessions made by Thames Valley during recent discussions with local authorities over the intention to reduce the number of buses on other routes in the Newbury district where there are fcw passengers.
"For a place the size of Newbury the town services are quite good and will be even better", the traffic manager, Mr. W. T. Stevenson. said last week.
He emphasized that the proposed changes were subject to the approval of the Traffic Commissioners, when they met to consider an application by Thames Valley for the curtailment of' poorly patronized services in the Newbury districts.