Dear Travel—By Order
There is a distinct air of the madhouse about the Minister of Transport's order for the withdrawal of the road service provided by Northern Roadways Ltd. from Edinburgh and Glasgow to Birmingham, London and Scarborough. The return road fare between Glasgow and London is £3 15s. as against the rail fare of £5 19s. 11d., soon to be increased by ten per cent. Some 30,000 passengers, showing a commendable desire for economy, had therefore booked their seats with Northern Roadways Ltd. for the summer months. What they will say when they hear that the Minister of Transport does not approve of this sort of thing so long as there are vacant seats on the trains, at a price only seventy-five per cent. higher than the bus fare, is not nice to contemplate. It had better be pointed out, while relative politeness is still possible, that this decision smells to high heaven of the vices of monopoly and restriction- ism. The bus companies, other than Northern Roadways Ltd., who have been operating on these routes are in any case pre- vented from duplicating their services to meet a rising demand for'cheap road travel by orders issued by the Ministry of Transport in 1934, when, it will be remembered, it was fashionable to argue that we should all be much happier if we had a little less of everything. These companies themselves, showing a nice regard for the doctrine of equal hardship all round, protested when Northern Roadways applied for a licence. Now that their demand, in which they joined with the Railway Executive, has been granted, the prospective bus passengers have the satisfaction of knowing that nobody will be unfairly treated—except, of course, the prospective bus passengers.
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