PLANS TO HAND LONDON’S TRANSPORT OVER TO OFFICIAL BODY.

Star (Christchurch), Issue 18937, 6 December 1929, Page 11

PLANS TO HAND LONDON’S TRANSPORT OVER TO OFFICIAL BODY.

LIMITED NUMBER OF BUSINESS MEN TO CONTROL ALL TRAFFIC. (United Press Assn.—By Electric Telegraph—Copyright.) RUGBY, December 4. Much interest continues to be taken in the Government’s scheme, to which Mr Herbert Morrison, Minister of Transport, referred this week, for the public ownership and co-ordination of London’s passenger traffic. Although Mr Morrison intentionally refrained from giving details, it is understood that the closest existing model for the scheme he has in mind is the Central Electricity Board, which the previous Government and which is a national and publicly owned undertaking controlled by an officially appointed body, and run as a business concern. Mr Mo'rrison’s idea is to place London’s traffic in the hands of a limited number of first-class business men, who will be employed by the community and encouraged to run it with all the vigour of a commercial enterprise. Interests which will have to be acquired would be the Underground and Metropolitan Railways, omnibuses, and tramways, and obviously the negotiations with the existing interests, whose capital is estimated at £100,000,000, will be long and intricate. For this reason. Mr Morrison has made it known that no elaboration of his recent statement on the proposals is likely to be made for some time.