'Fork-out' for children soars
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• This week the new NBC company London Country Bus Services Ltd has applied to increase the proportion of adult fares payable by children under 14 to three-quarters and to withdraw cheap fares for children from 14 to 18, while City of Oxford has applied to increase to two-thirds of the adult fare children's fares on its country services—both as part of general fares increases. So a warning from Aid Norman Harris, chairman of the Federation of Municipal Passenger Transport Employers, that bus companies can no longer support special fares for schoolchildren, is very topical.
Aid Harris said it would be much better if the public at large shared the cost of providing such concessions. Under the conventional system when children under 14 payed half the adult fare, it was the adult passenger who subsidized the children's fares.
Concessionary fares throughout the country would be cut, said Ald Harris. Of this he had no doubt. Costs to operators were rising rapidly, he warned—the wages of municipal men alone had increased by 30 per cent in eight months.
Councils which subsidize children's fares will also have to pay more. The London Country proposals have already led to a formal protest from Hertfordshire County Council made to the Metropolitan Traffic Commissioners at the public hearing on Wednesday and yesterday. The council claim that abolition of half fares for children 14 to 18 would cost ratepayers an extra £90,000 and the increased fares for children up to 14 would cost a further £45,000.
In terms of cost to individuals, a mother with two children aged 14 to 18 living only one mile from a school would face a weekly cost of I Is 8d instead of 5s—an increase of 130 per cent.