Big Reorganisation Of British Railways

Press, Volume XCIX, Issue 29154, 15 March 1960, Page 11

Big Reorganisation Of British Railways

(Special Correspondent N.Z.P.A.)

(Rec. 10 p.m.) LONDON, March 14. Plans are being made for what is described as an unprecedented reorganisation of Britain’s pub-licly-owned railway system. Only the broad outline of the steps proposed have been given in the Commons by the Prime Minister (Mr Macmillan) but it is taken for granted that for the travelling public they will mean higher passenger fares, for industry higher freight charges, for the taxpayer a short-term subsidy to the railways, and for railways employees acceptance of a possible redundancy scheme and regrading as well as increased efficiency. In return, railwaymen will, for the first time since the State took over the industry—according to the Prime Minister’s statement in the Commons—receive “fair and reasonable wages.” At the same time, he pointed out the Government was determined that the industry’s standard of service to the public be higher than ever before. The main objects of the new policy are that the railways should be reduced to a scale on which its services are likely to be wanted in the 1960’5, that various regions should be made responsible for their own operations and .be separately accountable for them, that the railways : should be given much greater commercial freedom to compete with other forms of transport and that the Government should provide the funds which the railways must have if it is to carry on at all. The Government has decided that its plan shall be worked out , by a special planning board and it is expected that some of the best brains in the industry will : be called in to advise the present Transport Commission. Under : the commission, the railways 1 have been losing money for years and the total debt is now £350 ] million. This year the railways I will incur another £BO million debt and a further £l5 million , in interest payments on what is already owed. i Most industrial correspondents i suggest that fares will now have i to rise appreciably—some sug- ' gest as much as 10 or 15 per ] cent.—but against this is the possibility that such a steep increase might price the railways out of i the market altogether. i

The commission already has authority to raise second-class fares from 2jd to 3d a mile and this seems the most likely immediate step. It is expected that once the new planning board is estab* lished, the Transport Commission will be reduced to something like a holding company with subsidiaries for individual regions—the hotels, docks, inland waterways and London Transport.