LONDON'S TRAFFIC.

Auckland Star, Volume LX, Issue 288, 5 December 1929, Page 7

LONDON'S TRAFFIC.

Central Authority To Control All Services. GOVERNMENT PLAN UNKNOWN. (British Official Wireless.) RUGBY, December 4. Great interest has been aroused by the announcement made in the House of Commons by the Minister of Transport, Mr. H. Morrison, that the Government is to draft a scheme for the unification of all the London traffic services under public ownership. Details of the proposals are keenly awaited, but they are unlikely to be available for some time, as the subject is to be explored at once by the Ministry of Transport with all the interests concerned in the London traffic services, including those of the municipalities. Mr. Morrison, in his statement, said that the Government agreed with the conclusions reached by the Traffic Advisory Committee, that uneconomic and unnecessary competition should be eliminated, and that a far-reaching measure of unification under public control was essential to progress. The Government believes that "the ends in view could be fully achieved, and the public interest fully safeguarded, only if the existing financial interests were consolidated by the substitution of a single and simple form of public ownership for the complicated work of separate interests, private and municipal, which now add so greatly to the difficulties of the situation." In some political quarters the view is taken that the Government contemplates creating a public body, on the lines of the Port of London Authority, to co-ordinate and control the various passenger services. In other quarters it is assumed that the creation of a public body that would buy out the existing passenger tramway, omnibus and tube railway services is intended.

Comment in the Press and by traffic experts is reserved, pending further details of the scheme.