Profitability Investigation Urged
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FOLLOWING a partial victory in the York-West. Yorkshire fares case (bus fares in York are to go up, but the increase will not be as much as the West Yorkshire Road Car Co. Ltd. asked for), the Labour Parliamentary candidate for the city, Mr. Alex Lyon, a barrister, said he intended to write to Mr. Aubrey Jones, chairman of the Prices and Incomes Board, to suggest that the profitability of publicly owned provincial transport should be put under survey.
The Yorkshire Traffic Commissioners refused the company's original application to revise and increase fares—but so that the company could introduce a new fare structure when the 40-hour week became effective, they modified the mileage scale.
This means that the estimated net increased income for the company will be reduced from £25,000 to /17,000 and that the mileage for a 3d. fare remains unaltered. Other fares will be put up according to scale. The Commissioners said: "Although they (the company) are entitled to raise some additional revenue by way of increased fares, they are not justified in making increases to the extent proposed in the application".
Supporting Mrs. Barbara Castle, the Minister of Transport, at an election campaign meeting in York on Sunday, Mr. Lyon said in regard to the York-West Yorkshire undertaking that there Fas a "funny scheme" whereby one partner in the undertaking could manage the whole of the affairs and the other remained a sleeping partner. It was still possible for West Yorkshire to apply to increase fares in the area, he said.
This it had done, and York City Council then refused to make an objection to the Commissioners. Mr. Lyon said it was left to the Labour Party locally to do so, and he represented it before the. Commissioners.
This objection, he added, had saved bus passengers £8,000 of a £25,000 increase.