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By The Hawk
a 10s. The Cost of Congestion
TRAFFIC density is buildhig up everywhere--and with it the cost of transport. In Wakefield, Yorks, operators have worked out that it now takes so long to get through the busy town that in terms of £ s. d. it could mean a loss of between £5 and £8 10s. a week in drivers' wages.
Are you listening, Mr. Minister-in-charge-of-the-roadsprogramme?
Road to Ruin
AT a meeting of the Leyland Council Road Safety subcommittee it was stated that factory workers were encouraging unlawful taxi" services by paying for lifts to and from work, and as a result local buses were losing passengers.
Cutting their own throats?
Lucky Break
OME people are born lucky, others manage to arrange their affairs well. I'm not saying which category Mr. D. 0. Good, a national vice-chairman of the Road Haulage Association, comes into. But I, have got a story to relate.
As he drove up to the door of the hotel where he was going to stay when attending a dinner a few days ago, his car conveniently broke a half-shaft. Not, you will mark, on the 70-mile journey there or on the 70-mile journey back,
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but right outside the door. And, my friends, he had a fitter with him in his car!
Management Hat-trick
THE only name to appear three times in the list of managers in The Commercial Motor's annual Municipal Bus Fleet Analysis is that of Mr. L. T. Merrall, who for 20 years now has been transport manager at Rawtenstall. Since the war he
has undertaken additional responsibility first for the Ramsbottom fleet and then for that of Haslingden. Under the guiding hand of Mr. Merrall I am sure that the public, so far as possible, get the best of all worlds, but local patriotism continues to keep the three units separate.
The total number of vehicles involved is 85, of which nearly 50 belong to Rawtenstall which, like Haslingden, at one time had a tram system. Before its handful of buses took over. the little town of Ramsbottom boasted a trolleybus service, It is fortunate that, unlike senior officers of the police, transport managers are not expected to appear in uniform. Otherwise Mr. Mena11 would undoubtedly need to be a member of the SocietY of Quick Change Artists.
To the Salt Mines.
1 HAVE often heard it said that technical journalists are a race apart. More than one manufacturer, after reading the report of a road test on one of his vehicles, has been heard to remark that technical journalists should certainly be a race apart—from mankind.
But their courage is beyond question—even behind the Iron Curtain it seems. For I have received some details of the publication in the Russian journal "Trud" of a road test on the new Russian bus, the PAS 651. "Seats fellapart. petrol tank mountings cracked, and cracks appeared in the bodywork," wrote the bold little brother.
It is hard, he wrote, to fit separate pieces of the bus body. and assembly workers frequently have to use a hammer to hang parts to rights. Dents thus caused of up to 2-in, deep arc filled in with putty, it is claimed.