Bus breakthrough in the balance
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There is a danger that the much more reliable — and thus more popular — services which many of Britain's bus operators have built up in the past two years will become casualties of the Government's anti-inflation measures. This unhappy turn of events is signposted clearly in the annual reports presented this week by the National Bus Company and the West Midlands Passenger Transport Authority.
Successive governments have encouraged improved public passenger transport, and the past two years have seen real progress. Last year, for example, the West Midlands authority found it possible to operate very nearly its full scheduled services, even in peak hours, and attributes this largely to lack of staff shortage. NBC makes the same point — an almost complete lack of service interruptions due to staff shortages and labour troubles and explains that this followed from improved wages and conditions, which in turn were supported by the ability to match fares increases to wage awards.
Now both NBC and West Midlands have issued warnings that this happy situation is not being maintained. Even if fares increases were approved by the Traffic Commissioners, the working of the freeze would make it impossible for operators to cover the very sizeable cost increments represented by the Clegg Award of last November and the April 1973 wage rises for platform and maintenance staff.
Already West Midlands is falling into deficit, while the NBC comments: . . it is ironical that having achieved such a standard of comparative stability in the past two years the finances will so obviously be eroded this year by circumstances outside the Company's contra-. If revenue slumps and wages cease to be competitive, the bus industry will fall back into the old spiral of staff shortages, unreliability and falling patronage. Only urgent Government action can avert such a regression.