MAIDSTONE CHAIRMAN ATTACKS PROPOSED PTAs
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ADDRESSING the annual general meeting of Maidstone and District Motor Services Ltd. on Tuesday, Mr. R. P. Beddow, chairman, said that it seemed that company operators were faced with a lingering death. Indeed, it might be called "the death by a thousand cuts". The proposed PTAs would have power to cut the heart out of a big company which operated services running both inside and outside a conurbation area.
"What happens to the rest of the acquired company's undertaking ?", asked Mr. Beddow. He could see nothing in the proposals for the advantage of the general public.
There was one attractive feature about the Minister's original thinking, he continued, but that, it seemed, had gone by the board. It was that the new authorities were to coordinate the authorities responsible for land-use planning, town planning, traffic planning, police functions and car parking, and to bring public transport into all these aspects of planning. This was afield in which co-ordination was notoriously weak, and advisory PTAs charged with the task of improving this could fulfil a very useful function. So why had they been dropped?
As it was, said Mr. Beddow, it seemed that the beginning of the memorandum issued by the Ministry on June 22 fairly bristled with false promises. To give but one example, it stated that there was no real co-ordination between bus and rail services along parallel routes. This was utterly untrue.
Mr. Beddow also disagreed strongly with the Minister in her "politically hallowed assumption" that road and rail should be under the same control. "I think this is both wrong and dangerous, for one side, probably rail, will tend to dominate and suppress the other", he said.