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'Evil day threat' of the CTA

28th April 1967, Page 62
28th April 1967
Page 62
Page 62, 28th April 1967 — 'Evil day threat' of the CTA
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Keywords : Centra, London, City

I F the Potteries Motor Traction Co. Ltd. was to become an appendage of some remote over-sized Conurbation Transport Authority centred on Birmingham it would he an evil day for the people of North Staffordshire, said Mr. Raymond Birch, retiring chairman of the company, at its annual meeting in London last week.

Mr. Birch asked what proof there was that to lump a lot of systems together in a monolithic structure, covering thousands of square miles, would do anything at all to help the travelling public by better services.

Experience showed the opposite. "Look at the unhappy case of London Transport, the monolith created in 1933 to bind together all the systems serving London. Not even its greatest friends could call its career exactly a success story", he said.

Mr. Birch added that he admired the skill and knowledge of the people running London Transport but said "they have always had an impos sible assignment trying to run an organization that is too big and too centralized, trying to get the right kind of action out of a slow moving giant. whose head is too far from his hands and feet."

He called on Mrs. Castle to name the experts who had advised her and to say whom she had consulted. He asked her to spell out what the advantages would be of "this wholesale disruption of the existing intensive systems of bus services in this country which have led the world with their high standards of organization and rolling stock".

A profit of £151,758, higher than the abnormally low result for 1965, was reported by Mr. Birch.

Flights in Timetable: Flights from Swansea Airport are for the first time included in the joint timetable published by the South Wales Transport Co. and United Welsh Services—giving a wide area of South Wales a timetable which co-ordinates bus, coach, rail and air services.

Tags

People: Raymond Birch
Locations: Birmingham, London

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