Swansea
Page 64
If you've noticed an error in this article please click here to report it so we can fix it.
,s
Passenger-transport Quandary
ANEETINGS of the Swansea Watch 1.V.Land Tramways Committees have been held to consider an aspect of the bus-licensing policy of the council, which bad been raised at a recent meeting of Swansea Corporation. It had been alleged that the corporation asset, part ownership of the tramways services, which it leases to the operating company, was being seriously depreciated by the fact that the sister company of the tramways company is running buses, licensed by the corporation, over local routes, thus withdrawing passengers from the trams which would, it was contended, be a redundant service by the time the lease expires in 1942.
The corporation had no financial interest in this bus company, which was
c34
"being consolidated at the expense of the tramways and the ratepayers."
At the tramways committee meeting a less generous issue of bus licences to the company owned by the tramways company was advocated unless some quidpro-quo interest in the bus services, to compensate for the alleged depreciation of the tramways, was arranged. The committee is to ascertain the extent of the alleged injury to its tramways asset.
At the watch-committee meeting the corporation was said to be "in a peculiar position." Members advocated that under the Traffic Act the corporation should immediately establish its own bus services. Sanction to do so, it was stated, would be a matter for the Traffic Commissioners to decide. It was stated that the Parliamentary Committee would consider the qnestion
of running buses. In this matter, it was hinted, the fact of the corporation having leased its tramways might make the obtaining of sanction to run buses
a complex matter. It was, however, urged that if the obtaining of this sanction were left until the tramways lease expired the difficulty of obtaining sanction might be increased, as the bus company would have "become consolidated" and its services so comOete that additional bus services might be judged unnecessary. The bus company, if bought out by the council, would, it was stated, only be acquired at huge cost.
. The matter of bus operation by the corporation is to be investigated.