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Virile Company ircomes Multiple Problems

by Kenneth Bowden !sive Use of One-man-operated Singlers Has Saved Many Maidstone and District es: Traffic Chaos is One of the Major year Difficulties ofa Diversified Operating Area

KENT is a beautiful county, and a famous one. Its hops help. to refresh and stimulate the nation. Its apples keep innumerable doctors away. Its white cliffs produce lumps in countless homecomers' 'throats. And, in many knowledgeable people's opinion, its bus services are among the best in Britain.

The company which provides many of these services, Maidstone and District Motor Services, Ltd., last week celebrated its golden jubilee. It was an impressive celebration of an impressive history. Today Maidstone and District, a member, of course, of the B.E.T.

group, is a big undertaking. It runs 800 vehicles, employs some 3,250 people and operates 19 depots. Its stage and express services amount .to nearly 200, and it is engaged as well in Lust about every activity open to a bus company.

Yet. somehow, Maidstone and District has managed to avoid the massive impersonality and unwieldliness often inherent in so large an enterprise. Problems there are, and big ones. Yet from the Thames to the Channel and covering the area from East Sussex to the River Stour, the cream and green livery of M. and D. would seem to fit happily and profitably into the life of a cosmopolitan community and its ever-changing working and-social conditions.

Maidstone and District began life in a wooden hut in Maidstone in 1911. Its assets were a share capital of £4,000, four eight-year-old chain-driven Halford chassis mounted with detachable double-deck bodies, a charabanc, two lorry bodies, and three vigorous and far-sighted individuals, Walter Flexman French, his son George and Colonel H. I. Robinson. Mr. French, senior, had over the preceding three years been running Maidstone-Chatham and Chatham-Gravesend services.

Th,T. new company's activities were not confined to passenger carrying. At night bus bodies were replaced by lorry tops, and the versatile chassis ran fruit and vegetables, hops, toffees for Edward Sharp and Sons, and anything else that would make a paying load. Next morning they were reconverted to buses.

But the public service side expanded rapidly. Inside three years, by which time British Automobile Traction Co., Ltd., had acquired a financial interest, links had been established between Maidstone and Rochester, Faversham, Sutton Valence, Hastings, Hawkhurst, Mereworth, Sevenoaks, Tenterden and Ashford, and between Chatham and Faversham.

By the time thi First World War started the company was operating 21 buses from a new office and garage in Upper Stone Street, and carrying over If m. passengers annually over fm. miles.

The war recovered from, expansion was again fast. By 1920 rolling stock totalled 74 with most of the old buses replaced. Depots sprang up, first at Hastings, then at Gillingham, and by 1930 there were 14. Operation from stands in Maidstone High Street presented difficulties, and in 1922 the company made history by opening the-first bus station of its kind in Britain in Palace Avenue. The same year a central repair and maintenance works was established in Maidstone, and a major step in the financial structure came through conversion from a private to a public company.

in 1923 express services were added to the continually expanding stage-carriage, excursions and private-hire operations, and the general area of the company as it is today had been broadly established. In 1928 the present headquarters, Knightrider House, was purchased and a large depot established in the grounds. In 1930 the Southern Railway acquired a financial interest in M. and D. (retained today by the B.T.C.); the company took control of the long-established Chatham and District Traction Company, and replaced its trams with motorbuses.

In 1933 the formation of the London Transport Passenger Board obliged the company to relinquish two depots and certain services in north-west Kent, but this was offset during the 1929-35 period by the acquisition of numerous services and companies within the main operating area, and particularly by expansion into the Tunbridge Wells area through acquisition of Autocar Services, Ltd., in 1933. By 1938 passengers carried yearly by the parent company and its Chatham and Hastings subsidiaries totalled 99m., and the group fleet had grown to 644 vehicles.

Then came the Second World War, and after it the succession of difficulties which the industry as a who1?. has consistently had to face.

Passenger traffic soared in 1945, but vehicle replacement

and maintenance problems stretched the undertaking to the limit of its resources. Rebuilding both of the fleet and depots became possible in the late 1943s, and in 1950 — when new vehicle dimensions allowed bigger vehicles to be introduced —M. and D. were carrying 165m. passengers over 29m. miles annually, with a fleet approaching 900 vehicles.

In the early 1953s extended tours were embarked upon, and rapidly became an established part of the enterprise, now covering the whole of Britain during the summer.

The early post-war years had seen a number of management changes, notably in 1946 the appointment to chairmanship of the board of Mr. R. P. Beddow, of B.E.T.. to a subsidiary of which the former B.A.T.'s interests in M. and D. had passed. Mr. Beddow is chairman today.

The present general manager, under whom over the past four years so many changes have been effected in the face of growing problems, is Mr. A. J. White, who came to Kent from the general managership of the Devon General Omnibus and Touring Co., Ltd.

Since 1950 there have been many changes in the company, some of them necessarily drastic in the face of sniralling costs and the never-ending competition of private transport. Notable among these has been the introduction on the grand scale of the one-man-operated bus, utilizing 43/42-seater single-deckers, which is examined in detail later on in this article. Additionally, in order to co-ordinate services for greater efficiency in the Medway towns, the company got Parliamentary powers in 1955 to integrate the Chatham and District Co. within itself. The same happened to the other remaining subsidiary, the Hastings Tramways Co., in 1957. Hastings' trolleybuses were run by M. and D. unlil May 31, 1959, when they were replaced by a fleet of Atlantean double-deckers concurrent with reorganization of services in Hastings and Bexhill. The introduction of these Attanteans marked, in fact, the beginning of the company's present fleet policy, which is the extensive use of front-entrance high-capacity (73-78seater) buses on heavily loaded town services.

Maidstone and District's present fleet comprises 800 vehicles, of which 420 are double-deckers, 30 standard single-deckers, 140 one-man-operated single-deckers and 210 coaches. Chassis are mainly A.E.C., Bristol and Leyland, but Guys, Commers and Daimlers are also in service. Bodywork is shared mainly between M.C.W. and Harrington, but Beadle, Eastern Counties, Leyland, Gurney Nutting, Park Royal and Saunders-Roe have also built for the company.

Standard types of vehicles are used with, as mentioned, large-capacity front-entrance double-deckers engaged on the bulk of town work. Large-capacity single-deckers are utilized where services warrant them, both for normal and one-man operation, with 15 30-seaters on the thinnest of services. Standard 41-seater coaches are employed for general work, with 37-seater luxury coaches used for extended tours.

The company's services continue to cover the whole field of passenger road transport. Bulk of the work is, of course, stage-carriage, with an annual mileage of 22,875,000. Express services cover 2,012,500 miles; excursions and tours 831,700, and contract carriage 1,270,000, giving a total annual mileage of some 26,989,200_ With the exception of certain express services and a number of deeper-penetrating stage services, the company's operating area is bounded in the north by Gravesend and Sheerness (the Thames Estuary, in fact); . in the west by Wrotham, Sevenoaks and East Grinstead; in the south by Pevensey, just east of Eastbourne, Hastings and Rye; and in the east by Ashford and Faversham. To the north M. and D. connect with London Transport, to the west with Southdown Motor Services, Ltd., and to the east with East Kent Road Car Co., Ltd. (both the latter being B.E.T. companies).

In the town of Maidstone itself, bus services are provided exclusively by Maidstone Corporation, with whom no working agreement is held, none really being necessary as there is no sharing of traffic.

Some 175 stage-carriage services are operated throughout and slightly beyond this area. Express services number 22. Additionally there is a wide variety of regular tours and excursions in season.

Maidstone and District's two major problems today are tural services and traffic density_ It would be no exaggeration to say that the company's terrain presents one or the other of these problems on the majority of the stage services. The country services are generally undersubscribed. The town services, running profitable loads, almost without exception have to cope with immense traffic congestion.

Of the two problems, perhaps rural services have attracted the most attention to date, simply because in this respect the operator is himself often able to do something to overcome his difficulties, whereas traffic congestion is a national disaster about which he is able to do little other than prompt and advise.

Undoubtedly in Maidstone and District's case, one-man buses have saved the day. The general manager is quite emphatic about this, and quotes figures to prove it. He says that but for one-man buses the company would have been forced over the past four years to reduce its rural service mileage by 3,250,000. The extensive use of the one-man system has saved these services, many of which do not earn sufficient receipts to cover the drivers' wages.

One appreciates, consequently, why Mr. White does not look with favour on the lack Committee Report. In his company, at least, extensive use of the one-man system, plus complete cross-subsidization, is the only commercially sound way to stay in business. Maidstone and District, of course, were operating the one-man system well before the idea "caught on" generally, or became a matter of major controversy within and without the industry. But it was in 1956 that the modern concept of the system first began to be fully exploited. Before then four single-deckers had been used on the one-man basis. Between 1956-57 another 30 were put on. Today some 20 per cent. of the company's stagecarriage service mileage is one-man-operated. Maidstone and District is listed as the 19th largest of state-owned, municipal and B.E.T. undertakings. In terms of one-man operation it is probably the biggest, but in Mr. White's view, by the end of this year the development of the system within his company will have reached its peak. At that time about a quarter of Maidstone and District's stage mileage will be covered by one-man services. Mr. White is alive to the problems inherent in the one-man system, and to the many arguments against it. But, so far as his own company is concerned, he has a good answer. "Either we went over to one-man operation or we withdrew the rural services, It is as simple as that. By doing what we have done, we have managed to save the vast majority of them."

The other major problem confronting the company, traffic congestion in the towns carrying the bulk of the profitable services, is today critical in the extreme. But it is obviously a problem to which the company itself can have no real solution.

Up until the opening of the A20 motorway in 1960, the headquarters town of Maidston6, Kent's county capital, presented a major problem, particularly at summer week ends when the bottleneck effect of the town on holiday traffic produced chaos. The building of the motorway, which by-passes Maidstone, eased this problem at first, but now, according to Mr. White, the build-up of purely local traffic has become sufficient to recreate it, although perhaps not quite on the former scale.

But it is the Medway towns—Strood, Rochester, Chatham, Gillingham and Rainharn—which present the really massive obstacle to efficient and economic urban stage-carriage services. Throughout the year to some degree, but especially in the summer months, the weight of traffic and the massive hold-ups are such as to break down completely the company's services. Strood-Rainham on -Saturdays and Sundays more often than not becomes a complete blockage in both directions. Every Maidstone and District service is affected—and there are 36 services operating in these five Medway towns, many of which are of high frequency.

Work is now in progress on the Medway section of the London-Dover motorway, and Mr. White admits that its completion should provide some relief, especially at week-ends But he fears that, as with Maidstone but to a greater degree, the build-up of local traffic once the through-flow has been improved will very quickly intensify the difficulties once again.

Another Local Bridge

It is apparent to Maidstone and District, and to anyone regularly moving about the Medway towns, that an absolute essential to easing, let alone removing, the traffic problem is another local bridge over the Medway at Rochester, making possible a one-way system utilizing the existing bridge now carrying every vehicle crossing the river. The local authorities have badgered the Ministry of Transport on the matter for years. The Ministry will not move until the motorway is completed, when it has promised to "look again."

A similar problem, although not so acute, exists in Tonbridge, another town astride both the Medway and a trunk road to the south coast. On paper there are M.o.T. plans for a by-pass, but nothing looks like materializing for a long time to come, a source of considerable bitterness among local people. In Tonbridge, however, Maidstone and District have recently opened a new depot and a certain amount of reorganization of services has had some palliative effect on stage services at present heavily affected by both local and through traffic.

Mr. White, like others in his industry, sees only long-term road remaking, plus limitation and control of private transport entering towns and cities (which he believes must come one day), as the only solution to these problems. His main fear is that we will let ourselves get into the same situation as now confronts the Americans, whose public road and rail transport has been destroyed by private transport, before controlling measures are taken on a large enough scale. That traffic engineering intelligently and enterprisingly applied can in some cases do much to relieve local conditions is, of course, true, and in this respect Mr. White applauds the County Borough of Hastings. For years the town had suffered from a traffic breakdown around the memorial in its centre. The local authority instituted a fairly bold system of one-way movement and traffic channelling. It was unpopular in some quarters, but in terms of traffic flow it worked. The company's services in the town have been consolidated and services are smoother now than they have been for many years.

In terms of traffic engineering,. however, Mr. White admits that conflicting commercial interests in any one centre are often responsible for lack of practical experiment and improvement. Certain local associations are vigorous in fighting any moves which are likely to make the shopper's journey even a little more difficult if he or she is using private transport.

Another difficulty in this respect is that of staggered hours. Few companies, even in the face of extensive national and local persuasion, will take action in this sphere, and efforts to get the education authorities' co-operation also seems to meet with little success. In Maidstone and District's territory only East Sussex has staggered school hours. Consequently, on most of its stage

services the company faces very high peaks. On one group of services 55 double-deckers do little more than 200 miles a vehicle from Monday to Friday between 7.30-8.30 a.m. and 4.30-6 p.m.

In other respects the problems facing the company in its 50th year are common to the industry—as, of course, are those already examined in some degree.

The company is 113 per cent. down on its platform staff, and there seems to be no immediate answer to this problem. Indeed, with the growth of industry within the operating area the reverse would probably be true.

The Chancellor's decision to ignore P.S.V. operators' pleas for some relief from fuel tax, and to increase the imposition in his "little budget," has, to say the least, proved most untimely for M. and D. The company has been reviewing the whole of its operations in an endeavour to determine what steps to take to offset increases in expenditure resulting from wages increases, the graduated pension scheme and sundry other items, all of which add up to £200,000. The company finds no pleasure in the obvious answer, having in mind other competitive factors.

Yet a further problem hitting the company increasingly hard is that of mini-buses. Indeed, Mr. White describes their growth over the past three years as a disaster. They are not in his experience being used as the then Minister of Transport, Mr. Watkinson, envisaged, on rural services. In Kent they are being used in competition with the company on a grand scale by private motorists and, rather worse, by industrial groups. Over the past four years Maidstone and District have suffered a 59 per cent. decrease in passengers on certainworkmen's services, directly attributable to this private transport and mini-bus operation. The company in these circumstances can do little to regain its lost traffic. .

As with the whole industry, of course, Maidstone and District have suffered heavily in the face of television and the private car, and the recession in passenger carrying within its operating area is described by Mr. White as having been substantial. Nevertheless, the 50-year picture is far from being entirely one of problems.

The company itself is extremely vigorous and forwardthinking. It also appears to have a flexibility and a willingness to experiment which are not obvious in all comparable undertakings.

Consolidation of the one-man-operated services by the extensive and increasing use of dual-purpose single-deckers —normal single-decker buses given an interior coach trim and seats—are a noteworthy feature of the present programme. Sixty-three of these are at present in service, and more are on he way.

The flexibility of the one-man services themselves, with stand collection of fares and the use of conductors at peak periods or through busy town sections, is noteworthy. So is the equipping of the single-deckers used for one-man work with almost every aid available to ease the driver-conductor's task, including the Swedish Almex ticket machine. This is a finely made piece of equipment which, with its manual selector keys, clean-cut tickets and audit roll, has proved almost foolproof, and has offset the one-man bus drivers' big worry, that of shorts or avers.

Another notable feature of the company's operation at present is the use of "load-meters." These are being used on a sampling basis and, as a result of three years' experience, their use is being progressively extended. The statistics obtained are of immense value not only in the future planning of services and their frequencies but in determining the type of vehicle and capacity. Thus, through more precise knowledge of the job greater efficiency has followed.

In administrative terms, too, the company is a young and vigorous "50." The most modern paying-in systems with mechanical cash-counting are in use in many depots and are being extended to others. Depots themselves are in many cases undergoing modernization.

By no means least, on the bright side, is the development of the operating area itself. Although mainly rural, and likely to remain so, the "new town" type of development is steadily on the increase. Such areas as Gravesend, Chatham, Gillingham, Sittingbourne, Hastings, Tonbridge and Maidstone itself are undergoing considerable population increases, and industrial development is also growing. Undoubtedly Maidstone and District will benefit from the modernization and electrification of Kent's rail services.

Maidstone andDistrict, too, look like having a healthy amount of contract work on their hands for many years to come. This type of traffic has generally been good and could be stepped up by the building of the Kent Motorway, by the increase in schools, and by the growth of industry.

The prospect for the next 10 years, to a diamond jubilee celebration, could indeed be a lot worse.