TRAFFIC IN LONDON

Evening Post, Volume CVIII, Issue 136, 5 December 1929, Page 9

TRAFFIC IN LONDON

GOVERNMENT PROPOSALS

INTERPRETATION VARIES

British Official Wireless.

BTJGBY, 3rd December.

Great interest has been aroused by the announcement made in the House of Commons by the Transport Minister, Mr. 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 not likely to be available for some time, as the subject is to be explored at once by the Transport Ministry with all the interests concerned in London traffic sorvices, including the municipalities.

Mr. Morrison in. his statement said that the Government agreed with the conclusions reached by the Traffic Advisory Committee that uneconomic and to necessary competition should be eliminated and that a far-reaching measure of unification under public control was essential to progress. Tho Government believed "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 singlo and simple form of public ownership for the complicated work of the separate interests, private and municipal, which now added so greatly to tho 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 tho various passenger services. In others 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.