Serious Errors in Licence Applications
Page 49
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DIFFICULTIES in connection with the Road and Rail Traffic Act are already occurring in Yorkshire. Some operators who were entitled to claimed tonnage have wrongly filled up their licence-application forms, with the result that they have applied for discretionary tonnage, and in one of these cases (that of an owner of one 2-tonner) a railway company has already filed an objection. This and other applications for discretionary tonnage will be opposed by the railways when the Yorkshire Traffic Commissioners hold their first sitting under the new Act, at Leeds, on April 25,
• The ignorance of many operators concerning the Act was deplored by Mr. G. E. Gilbey, chairman. of the North-eastern Division of the Commercial Motor Users Association, when presiding at a meeting at Dewsbury, last Friday, Mr. James France, president of the C.M.U.A., who was the chief speaker, touched on the same point. "I don't think," he said, " that there is one operator in every 500 who knows what he should know about the Traffic Acts of 1930 and 1933." Although it was difficult for most operators to keep pace with road-transport legislation they could safeguard themselves by membership of an association.
The need for more organization amongst Yorkshire operators was shown by the fact that although, in Yorkshire, the C.M.U.A. was Strongly represented, it had handled fewer than one-eighth of the total applications for A and 13 licences in the area. If operators who. had made mistakes in filling up .their. forms had had the expert advice provided by the C.M.U.A., those errors—some of them serious— would have been avoided. Speaking of the weak-bridges position, Mr. France stated that, although the Minister of Transport had deferred the operation of that part of the Road and Rall.Traffic Act, he had definitely stated that he would put it into operation at an early date.
" Why -should weak bridges be strengthened out of the rates? " said Mr, France. " They are largely railway property, and we, as road operators, are determined to know the actual strength of these bridges."
Mr. France continued: "The railway companies have statistics now of almost every road operator's work, and probably, when it comes to the hearing of objections, it will transpire that they know more than we think. On the her hand, we know, a good deal of the doings of the railway companies and of the ways in which they have obtained information."