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uses: will nobody change?

3rd June 1966, Page 35
3rd June 1966
Page 35
Page 35, 3rd June 1966 — uses: will nobody change?
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Which of the following most accurately describes the problem?

HE likely persistence of adverse outside factors makes it all the more imperative for the industry If to attend to the main internal cause of its con:tion—namely, rising costs due to rising wages tccompanied by any significant reduction in the npower required per vehicle-mile.

Chose are the words of the Prices and Incomes trd whose report on pay and conditions of busmen ; published late last week (see Commercial Motor, y 27). The 38-page report by Mr. Aubrey Jones his colleagues is one of the most important to have n published about the bus industry in recent years, t in those words the Board has succinctly pointed the real crux of the problems of contemporary ;e-carriage operation, where platform-staff pay up 51d. from every Is. fare charged to the everndling army of passengers.

or better or worse the industry is inextricably ght in its own web of cross-subsidization. Nobody ms quite clear where commercial enterprise ends I public service begins. Few operators seriously rit subsidization of non-profitable services—there

are too many strings attached. Only an optimist would contend that there was any merit in half-baked plans for huge area-conurbation boards to run all stage services; these would lead only to cumbersome management machines, higher costs and deterioration of service.

Remission of fuel tax would be a temporary palliative; but busmen must be on a weaker wicket insisting on a reduction for buses alone than if they joined forces with other commercial road users—who perform just as much of a public service as do buses. In any case fuel represents only 1-1-d. of that shilling, tax being about id. of that. Unless tax were totally abolished—surely a Utopian hope—the saving would soon be lost among new increases in costs and fares increases would be that much harder to bring about.

The answer lies, as the Board rightly points out, with better use of staff and vehicles. Just as the unions must face this honestly and without cant, so must management jolt itself out of the rut. Has either side got the sense of urgency Mr. Jones demands?

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