A reliable answer
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NINETEEN-seventy-five may come to be regarded in retrospect as the year in which, despite economic stringency, the decline in rural bus services was reversed. If so, this happy reversa may owe more to the enterprise of operating companies like Eastern Counties Omnibus than to local government r rganisation and the creation of the TPP system. A report last week's CM spelt out how Eastern Counties had employed some of its staff as part-time, low-cost market researc ers and then devised some new ways of serving rural conmunities and revived some old ways in new guise. Already the "village loop" service has proved to be a passengeretter in West Norfolk, and a variety of projects elsewhere lave a reassuring combination of practicality and fresh thinking. Service regularity is the keystone on which Eastern Counties is building its new services—though it is also adding "demand" services such as Dial-a-Ride and doorstep/carrier buses where it sees a real potential. There must be many parts of Britain where this NBC company's solutions could be applied without heavy public expenditure. NBC is well placed to carry the message to those parts; but it takes enlightened county response—like Norfolk's—to accept such services as really good value for money.