Rural transport plans revealed
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■ OME car and taxi drivers will be able to charge passengers at eparate fares and unlicensed minibuses operate when arliamentary time is found for a Bill to relax the psv licensing ystem in four experimental areas.
The lid was taken off the Department of Transport's rural transport plans by assis:ant secretary Douglas Mileanti at a Transport and Road Research Laboratory symposium last week.
Little was known previously ibout the rural transport !xperiments the Government ntended to make except for he areas where they would .ake place — Devon, North iiorkshire, South Ayrshire and Dyfed.
The Government have already thrown out an opposiLion Bill introduced by Mr Ian Gow aimed at liberalising licensing all over the country.
A DoE. spokesman emphasised that the Government Bill, when introduced, would only liberalise licensing in very specific areas for a limited time to allow experiments to take place.
Al! the modifications to the present licensing system provided for under the new Bill will be limited geographically to the designated areas and involve an initial time limit of two years, said Mr Milefanti.
Before such experimental services are introduced he said, a complete survey of the existing bus and train services of the areas will be taken. These would then be reorganised to try and achieve a better service using the same resources.
Once this pattern of services was fixed then some of the gaps would be filled by 'unconventional' services perhaps using volunteer drivers on a variable route — but still able to be authorised under the Road Traffic Act. School buses carrying fare paying passengers as well as children would also be included in this.
Only after services are reorganised along these lines will cars and taxis carrying fare paying passengers be used to fill the remaining gaps, said Mr Milefanti.
The local responsibility for the experiments are in the hands of local working groups under the control of a national steering committee. "It would be a pity if all four working groups decided on the same mix of say three experiments," said Mr Milefanti. "This is where the central committee comes in, with a general overview of the programme."