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RIDE By Frank Burravoe Who says stage fares are to be 'pegged'?
Page 63
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serve districts outside as well as inside their boundaries. To subsidize transport from rates for the benefit of one's own constituents is not a horse but a bus of one colour; to do so for outsiders is altogether another thing.
Most municipal mileage will be stage. Few Corporation undertakings run any express carriage services worth the mention although some run pseudo-contract carriages (occasionally under doubtful statutory powers) to local places of entertainment and recreation for other Corporation departments, such as Education and Welfare Committees, and also for non-municipal bodies sometimes. Nevertheless, it remains safe to say that almost all municipal mileage will qualify for the 6d. fuel tax rebate.
With company operators, however, the whole situation is very different. They are likely to resist any diminution in their present profits, which in theory at least have been held by the Traffic Commissioners to be reasonable. Not for the companies will there be any extensions of concessionary fares except when circumstances, such as the running of a joint service with an operating municipality which insists on giving cheaper or free travel, force them to keep in step with their partner on the service.
LAnother major difference is that they
run Very extensive express, excursion and contract carriage mileage, on all of which the extra fuel tax will fall. Even without that additional impost, Midland Red, to quote an example, is said to pay £900.000 a year in fuel tax.
The question of what companies will do to maintain their approved standards of profit in face of all the extra costs which the Budget and subsequent measures have directly and indirectly imposed is therefore bound to arise soon. To raise express and excursion charges may not be a feasible remedy because of railway competition, Contract charRes, too, may be unalterable until agreements expire. So stage fares may once again have to come to the rescue.
Fortunately for some companies, many long-distance services with obvious express carriage characteristics are officially classed as stage merely because. on certain sections of the routes (often only small sections) there happen to be fares of less than one shilling.
An example is the service between Middlesbrough and Liverpool operated jointly by the Northern General, Yorkshire Woollen District, United Automobile, Lancashire United, North Western and West Yorkshire companies; the overall return fare is 395., but there are local fares of less than 1s. in the Ripon neighbourhood which bring ,the whole service into the stage category.
Another instance comes from the Lancashire-Scottish services run by the Ribble and associated companies where there are a few small fares in Cumberland. There are many other similar curiosities on long-distance services.
On what proportion of p.s.v. operation will the new fuel tax fall? Roughly a quarter. The mileage figures given by the Ministry of Transport for the last complete year are:—
Stage ... ... 1,910 millions Express 116 ..
Excursion and tours .. 64 „ Contract ... 273 „ But the stage figure includes trolleybus and tram mileage, such as it is nowadays.
Two things are crystal clear from the foregoing. The first is that bus passengers who imagine from Government statements that stage fares are going to remain at their present level will soon find out their mistake. The second is that some anomalies are going to arise in the application of the 6d. fuel tax rebate.
Nevertheless, acceptance by the Government of the rebate principle is a milestone in bus history. Not even in the Suez crisis was that principle adopted. Bus men are already asking---where do we go from here?