Scottish Companies Allowed More Duplication
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DESP1TE objections lodged by Northern Roadways, Ltd., two State-owned companies, Scottish Omnibuses, Ltd., and the Western S.M.T. Co., Ltd., have been granted permission to yun extra duplicates from Glasgow and Edinburgh to London. Altogether, 26 coaches from each Scottish city may be run each day. The Scottish Licensing Authority heard the case specially last Friday.
Northern Roadways, Ltd., is permitted until the end of September to run two coaches a day from Gla4gow and Edinburgh to London and four from London to Scotland. On May 12, the company will apply to put 10 coaches a day on the Glasgow-London run and eight on the Edinburgh-London service.
At last Friday's hearing, it was stated that the applicants had booked 58,692 passengers for the MaySeptember period and another 27,346 were on the waiting list. It was estimated that there would be 78 occasions when the Edinburgh service would be inadequate and 82 when the Glasgow service could not meet demands.
Mr. Robert Beveridge, director of the applicant concerns, said that Scottish Omnibuses and Western S.M.T., as the original operators, should be allowed the benefit of any extra duplication granted.Mr. D. Jeffrey Aitken, for Northern Roadways, asked that existing operators should share duplicated facilities and requested that the hearing be adjourned until his client's case came up on May 12.
Mr. Beveridge resisted this suggestion, saying that it would be wrong for the Authority to decide the present application in the light of facts that might be presented in another. He also pointed out that the British Transport Commission's only control over the applicants was in finance. The Commission did not interfere with day-today operations. He could not conceive the issue of instructions not to provide duplicate coaches so that travellers would have to go by rail.