Sunderland's zonal fares system
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• A new zonal fares system, replacing Sunderland Corporation's flat-fare scheme, was given the go-ahead by the Northern Area Traffic Commissioners at a two-hour hearing in Newcastle last Friday.
The town will be divided into three zones, a central zone with a radius of three-quarters of a mile, an interim zone of two miles and beyond this the outer zone.
Corporation solicitor Mr. Louis Bloom said the fare would be 4c1 in cash or a 3d token in each zone and the effect would be that a passenger travelling through, three zones would pay is in cash or 9d in bus tokens.
The flat-fare scheme in the town had failed to produce the expected results and it was inevitable that longer distance passengers must pay more if the basis of charge was to be restored to the generally accepted pattern of payment for distance travelled.
"The gloss of the flat fare has worn off. Sunderland must take a hard look at the spoilt child and to keep the flat fare would just be storing up trouble.
-The controlling group in Sunderland believes that transport is a commodity and should be purchased like any other and that it should be realistically priced," he added.
Mr. Bloom said that the application was opposed by the Sunderland Borough Labour Party and the town's trades council and he added that the subject of the new system had been clouded by political and emotional pressures.
A petition with 6,000 signatures protesting about the new system was presented to the Commissioners by a party official and Mr. James Sanderson, secretary of the trades council, said that families on outlying estates would be badly hit by increasing travelling costs at a time of wage restraint.
But the Commissioners' chairman, Mr. J. A. T. Hanlon, approving the new system, said the result of the flat-fare scheme would lead to a deficit in the future of £310,880.
While they sympathized with the objectors they were satisfied that the application had been forced on the corporation and that the proposals were not unreasonable.
No starting date for the system has been fixed but other operators on joint routes were given permission to bring fares into line.