LTB is raring to go
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FARES APPLICATIONS ON THE WAY • Several schemes for more Red Arrow buses and flat-fare routes in the suburbs are prepared and over 150 new buses are waiting to go into service. Agreement with the Union is needed to get the plan started, after which consideration can be given to speeding the LTB bus plan—provided the manufacturing industry can cope with the demand for more buses. This was a key point in the statements with which London Transport Board reacted swiftly to the PIB's report (CM last week).
The LTB's comments stressed that it had been trying over the years, "in many cases with a good measure of success" to achieve objectives to improve its financial position as set out by the Prices Board. But their introduction required the co-operation of staff, and extensive research and development in some cases.
Productivity negotiations with the TGWU were well advanced, said the Board, when the PIB bus productivity report appeared, laying down terms which had now required a fresh approach by the LTB. But the Board recognized the importance of getting the bus reshaping plan started.
With the Government brake on fares applications removed, LTB announced last week that it was applying to the Transport Tribunal to raise fares, with the hdpe of introducing the new scales in late summer this year.
The bus and Underground minimum would rise to 6d, there would be a "coarsening" of the whole scale, and bus fares would be arranged in 3d steps from 6d to 3s 6d with 6d steps thereafter; thus the fares from the three-mile Is to the 10mile 2s 9d would not be raised.
On Green Line services—for which oneman extension is planned-6d steps would be generally adopted. The effect of the whole bus-Underground-Green Line applications was intended to raise LTB's annual revenue by about £.8.6m.
Announcing its plans, LTB gave examples for single ticket rates, at current sterling conversions, for public transport in cities abroad. For example, New York's flat fare is Is 8d, Paris minimum is is, Rome's flat fare is 8d, Milan's lid, Stockholm's Is 7d.
Obviously stung by criticisms voiced at the PIB Press conference, London Transport has issued a statement in which it refuses to accept strictures about management failings. The management, it says, has been shown in successive government inquiries since 1955 to be competent, and the PIB has failed to appreciate the constraints under which LTB operated—for example, in fares control by the Tribunal.