Bird's eye view
Page 52
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*No-man operated
Drivers as a class are not to be trusted. That is the view of RHA West Riding area chairman W. Bridge, head of Flowers Transport Ltd., Yorks. I hasten to add that Aid. Bridge, chairman of York's streets and buildings committee, was thinking about motorists at large and not commercial drivers.
The reason? A year ago the City decided to operate its car parks on a "Trust-theMotorist" basis and to ask drivers to put a shilling in a machine to secure a day's parking ticket. Now a check-up has shown that only a third of the parkers actually pay so that about 00,000 a year is being lost on the deal.
* Cheeky chappies
Some day someone will write a history of the Ceylon Transport Board; in the hands of a humourist it could be a rather cruel best-seller. The regular reports which we receive from a correspondent in Ceylon record a succession of tales of woe and unhappy happenings. Maybe it's the climate, but the reports suggest that it is for some reason physically impossible to keep the number of buses, staff and passengers in a state of balance—to a degree which would make the most harassed, understaffed British undertaking's problems pale into insignificance.
Let me give you a resume of the latest report. First, the registered fleet strength of CTB is 4,880, but of these only 3,900 are currently runners. Second, a report by a special committee slates drivers and conductors for rudeness. It alleges that conductors have become such a law unto themselves that several who appeared before the committee had to be pulled up for being cheeky.
The report suggests a breakdown in discipline among employees and that the most common victims of the conductors' discourtesy are women passengers; it urges "severe treatment" for unruly behaviour.
So much for staff. Next we learn that the CTB has decided to scrap its plans for a luxury bus station costing Rs25m in Colombo and to use the money to buy more buses. The chairman of the Board has proposed fleet-strength targets of 4,167 bums by September and 4,390 by March 1969—but the responsible Minister is meanwhile reported as having told 12 bus travellers' associations that there isn't the money for new vehicles, that lack of spares and deliberate sabotage have put buses off the road, and that the travelling public will have to put up with things for a bit. Just to make the situation even more ripe with possibilities, we are told that the CTB is selling off about Rs7m worth of redundant spares and a committee has been appointed to investigate the circumstances in which this quantity of spares has been declared obsolete!
*The biter bit
Just to even up the score, let me say there is another side to the picture. Bus drivers and conductors in Ceylon are now being assaulted at the rate of one a day—and on one day alone in Colombo no fewer than 24 reported to the medical officer that they had been attacked by passengers!
The staff and bus-strength situations are not so divorced as some might think; much of the bad feeling and violence stems from the fact that buses are overloaded, and "footboard" travellers resent being told to get off.
Sounds a lively transport situation, doesn't it?
*Back-seat driver
Just returned from seeking the sun (successfully) in Scotland, CM's editor tells me he fondly thought that in shaking the dust of the office off his feet for a fortnight, he had left all that shoulders-to-the-wheel stuff behind for a bit. But no such luck. Editor and family parked their car at Inveraray to have a day of coach-and-boat touring, boarded the MacBrayne coach and waited hopefully. With the coach nicely loaded, the driver made several abortive attempts to start and then began taking up inspection panels in the floor and prodding hopefully at the vitals. It seemed the starter had jammed.
This having failed, an attempt was made to rock the coach in gear. No luck. So out got all the passengers and the fair sex looked on while the men of the party pushed the coach through Inveraray's main street until, eventually, it fired. Did someone murmur "busman's holiday"?
It could happen to anyone; and MacBrayne's redeemed themselves in the editor's eyes on the return journey, in a different coach, whose young driver performed miracles of manoeuvring and clutch control in boarding the Bute ferry which seemed very poorly equipped with dunnage or bridging plates to cope with an awkward ramp angle at this particular state of tide. Action, please!
*Winking stripes
Those jazzy yellow and black stripes on the rear of municipal vehicles are excellent for warning other traffic but a colleague tells me he very nearly hit the rear of one last week despite this. That may sound like a gross piece of driving without due care and attention, but not so. The vehicle—a gully emptier—turned across his path apparently without warning and he had to brake sharply. It was only then that he detected the winker winking a right-hand turn. The point is that this winker happened to coincide with a yellow stripe and in bright sun was almost indistinguishable. A contrasting black border would solve this problem.
* Celestial navigation
When is somebody going to persuade, coerce or force Glasgow to put up some decent direction signs? I've had to travel across the city on a couple of occasions recently and found it even worse than Birmingham—which for years has been my pet hate for road signposting. Glasgow takes the palm for totally incomprehensible and scandalously inadequate main route signing, and even the "local" signposting which can sometimes be a help in such circumstances is woefully lacking.
In the end I resorted to navigating by the sun. Fortunately there was never a dull moment.
*Salutary
Seen on the Road to the Isles: "DANGER: BLASTING. No camping allowed". A few miles farther on: "Parking for cemetery traffic only". Hmm.