Bus battle beginning
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PE first reaction to the Minister of Transport's roposals (announced last week) to set up authorties to control public transport on Merseyside, he West Midlands, the Greater Manchester area and Pyneside has been predictable. The British Omni)tirs Companies Public Relations Committee's forthight remarks are published on page 31 of this issue. :t is equally predictable that they will not basically tffect the Minister's intentions.
Although the powers to set up authorities will )e sought in the new Transport Bill which the Labour Government hopes to present towards he end of 1967, the Minister is pressing ahead with preliminary discussions and by mid-January the will personally have visited the steering committees )f the four areas.
The case for such "blanket" area arrangements .ests on the degree to which the Minister proposes iterally to interpret the word "conurbation". The word implies a linking together of a number of adja.3ent urban areas and, indeed, the four authorities ;elected lend themselves to this. But in each of the ireas many of the existing bus operators provide not rily urban and inter-urban services but also a large lumber of mainly uneconomic rural routes which ire heavily subsidized by the "cream" urban services. It is difficult to see how any scheme is going to get round the question of rural bus services unless the Government accepts the principle of complete subsidization of such routes on a basis of social necessity. Even then, there are many arguments for and against subsidization; not the least of which is the basically correct fear by bus operators that acceptance of subsidies must involve acceptance of an element of outside control of at least their method of operating such routes.
The rural aspect Another seemingly intractable problem would be the decision as to who would operate rural services. It is difficult to envisage any way in which the high degree of internal subsidization between paying and non-paying routes—as practised by all public trans port undertakings (including the railways) could substantially be varied without vastly increasing cost. There certainly seems no way of improving the efficiency or frequency of service offered by existing arrangements, which are broadly based on the interplay between economic demand and social necessity.
Much could be said. Much will be said. But in the process bus operators must be very careful not to give an impression of unwillingness to examine existing structures in the light of changing demands.