NBC eyes council buses
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NATIONAL BUS this week hit back at those Who want to carve up the NBC into small local units administered by counties. It announced that if the 47 district council bus undertakings were merged with NBC then this would be to the public advantage.
"Some are of a–siie to justify. the degree of local autonomy given to existing NBC subsidiaries and the accepted objectives of re-organisation could be achieved if their separate identities were permanently retained within an enlarged national group," said the NBC in its reply to the DoE consultation paper on transport policy.
"Bringing together NBC and district undertakings in this way would create a holding company with about 5,000 buses more than the present 20,000 and would not therefore increase significantly the scale of the NBC."
A plea for financial support to be guaranteed for sufficiently far into the future to make rational planning possible was also made by the NBC in its reply.
"There is a clear case for the substitution of cheaper road services for some existing rail services which themselves are currently supported at a much greater cost to the community," it said.
The suggestion from British Rail that it should be given a monopoly over certain longdistance routes is given short shrift by NBC. "The fares paid in a year by road express passengers in total are not large enough for even the most optimistic estimate of the transfer of passengers to rail to reduce to more than a tiny fraction the rail losses," it said.
Independent operators who say they are prepared to operate NBC loss-making services are also queried. "These operators would not operate the whole timetable which NBC is now operating but only at those times which suited them," said the report.
The cash paid in support would be better paid direct by central government than through the counties, says the NBC.