New role for bus operators in 1974
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• The future role of bus operators under the provisions of the Local Government Bill, due to come into effect in April 1974, is that of public transport contractors to the new county councils, the Public Road Transport Association annual conference was told on Wednesday.
This revelation, which clarifies speculation on the future in store for bus and coach operators under the proposals for the reorganization of local government, was made by Mr Charles N. Tebay, Under-Secretary at the Department of the Environment, during the discussion following Mr E. C. Claxton's paper.
In Mr Tebay's opinion, many county councils suffered from a lack of public transport advisers on their staff.
Mr C. R. Buckley (London Country) claimed that so far only fragmented experiments had been made to give priority to buses. The whole subject should be examined more closely, he said. He was glad that the DoE had set up a working group for urban passenger studies, in both residential and industrial areas.
Quoting instances where buses were unable to use roads on new housing estates, Mr Buckley spoke of one example where the nearest point to a new estate which could be reached by buses was 0.6 miles!
An unfortunate experiment in Portsmouth was described by Mr R. E. Bottrill (Portsmouth). Priority for cars had been provided in a principal city centre street from which all transport, including buses, had been banned. He said that this was the complete reverse of what the bus industry was fighting for.
Mr Bottrill also wondered if sufficient instruction was given to students of traffic and highway engineering while at college of the need for priority for public transport.
The PRTA papers are reported on page 35.