Company and Council Must Negotiate
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A FTER a six-day battle over who fk should provide stage services from Stockport to the corporation's new housing estate at Brinnington, which
• was brought into the borough by the extension of the boundary, the contestants, the North Western Road Car Co., 4, Ltd., and Stockport Corporation, were told last week by Mr. F.
chairman of the North Western Traffic Commissioners, that they were satisfied that co-ordination was essential.
He added that the Commissioners had previously urged negotiation on the applicants. Now they would press it on them. (Earlier hearings were reported in The Commercial Motor on August 3 and last week.)
Mr. John Green, North Western traffic manager, said earnings on their Denton through service were 31.98d. per car-mile, made up of 9.53d. from Stockport to Brinnington and 22.45d. for the rest. On the shorts it was 31.37d.
If the corporation's application were granted, they feared they would lose all the Brinnington traffic, and receipts would fall below the company's working costs of 22.5d. per car-mile. Follow,ing the recent wage increase, these Were likely to become 23d. per car-mile. Over 30 per cent. of their total mileage was unremunerative, and some routes were operating at a loss of Is. per mile.
Mr. H. Backhouse, for the corporation, said they were not seeking to deprive North Western of anything, • The densely populated first mile from Mersey Square, on the Denton service, was corporation territory before the company came into existence. Yet they persisted in thinking of themselves as saving Stockport from transport starvation.
Mr. Williamson said that for the public benefit it was desirable that both parties should have licences and that the service should be jointly operated or co-ordinated. The protective fares and ld. per passenger paid by the company to the corporation ought to be abolished. They would leave the matter fluid for negotiation, but it was their view that there should be a common terminal point in Stockport, parity of fares, that the service should go into the estate, and that all shorts should be removed from the Denton licence.
The applicants should bear in mind that if there were an appeal, one or both of them would be disgruntled, and the fluidity now existing would be gone. To allow for negotiation, there would be no published decision for several weeks.