• Of 249 complaints about local services operated by National
Page 24
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Welsh Omnibus Co, 146 were denied, thirteen were admitted, and another 45 came too late for the company to investigate said National Welsh's managing director Brian Noton, during the second and third day of a Cardiff public inquiry before South Wales Deputy Traffic Commissioner Garrard Sullivan.
The Commissioner is considering whether to impose a condition prohibiting National Welsh from operating some or any local services, and whether to order it to repay £60,000 in fuel duty rebate, in the light of the complaints. (CM 18-24 May).
Traffic area staff gave evidence of monitoring exercises which showed apparent early and late running, the non operation of some journeys and the operation of unregistered journeys. There had also been instances of vehicles being observed while left unattended with engines running, of drivers smoking and of a vehicle which appeared severely overloaded.
National Welsh employees produced waybills and ticket machine audits in respect of many journeys it was alleged had not operated.
For the company, Geoffrey Jones said some of the alleged non-operation of journeys and the running of unregistered journeys was explained by the linking of registrations. In other cases route numbers had been changed, something that did not have to be notified to the Traffic Area.
Operating director Ian Moncrieff said that lost mileage last year totalled 4.8%, and he felt there were many mistakes in the monitoring that had been carried out. About 20% of vehicle movements were not registerable and he was concerned about vehicles running light and out of service leading to allegations of the operation of unregistered services. He felt that some of the complaints were political and resulted from Inter Valley Link losing a commercial battle with National Welsh.
Inter Valley Link had refused to agree to a post deregulation stand off. Competition escalated and each time National Welsh sought a truce they were rebuffed. Inter Valley's losses climbed to glmillion a year and National Welsh purchased Inter Valley about two weeks before it would have gone into liquidation. National Welsh was left to pick up the pieces. The vehicles were under maintained, the staff were under motivated and there were grave operating losses. When the mess was untangled, there were residual problems of staff shortages and reliablity which had now been put right.
National Welsh took an extremely serious view of smoking by drivers and unsafe practices, said Moncrieff.
Noton said that since deregulation, the company's passenger carryings had increased by five to 10% per annum.
The hearing was adjourned until June.