LONDON TRANSPORT

Wairarapa Times-Age, 2 November 1940, Page 9

LONDON TRANSPORT

PASSENGER AND GOODS SERVICES SOME SHARP CRITICISM. PROBLEMS OF STAFF SHORTAGE. *_ (By Telegraph—Press Association—Copyright) LONDON, October 31. The London Passenger Transport Board is vigorously tackling the problem of transporting 3,750,000 workers to and from work daily throughout the winter. Meanwhile, the existing transport position has excited the criticism • of two morning newspapers. The ■ “Daily Telegraph” urges improved staff work and the “Daily Mail” alleges : that the public are disgusted with the i railway food services. 1 The Transport Board's plans include more express buses, the restoration of all coach routes in the outer areas and also new bus services parallel with the interrupted railway routes, an earlier peak hour for bus and tube services and more stations open during raids. The staff shortage is the board’s principal problem. Nearly a thousand London conductors have been trained as drivers and women were enrolled as conductorettes, but on calling up 350 women only 20 replied. Passengers are unlikely to require road vehicles after 10 or 11 p.m., and therefore it is not intended to run scheduled journeys after those hours. Special buses will be running for late workers and the tubes will run later. An appeal has been made for a thousand bus conductors, male or female. Nine hundred buses taken off the roads when petrol rationing was introduced will be put in service, and the, plans also include the introduction of express buses on twenty routes and of 400 buses from the provinces supplied by between 40 and 50 undertakings. A TREMENDOUS TASK. The general manager (operations), London Passenger Transport Board, Mr T. E. Thomas, outlining the plans, pointed out the vast nature of the task of taking workers to and from home, supplementing the main line rail services, evacuating women and children, working express and emergency schedules, planning the route of diversions and repairing damage. Regarding this last-mentioned task, Mr Thomas gave two instances recently of the rapid repair of serious ; damage. A high-explosive bomb struck a station platform in the open, derailed a train, made the station roof ; dangerous and wrecked a signal gantry . and made the railway unsafe. Re- . stricted services were running next , day. In the second case a bomb fell behind a signal cabin, damaging it I severely and making it unsafe and throwing one truck bodily on another. < The services were restored two and a 1 half days later. • I Other improvements include the ] opening, in conjunction with the main line railways, of information bureaux I in the city. c

Happier aspects of Britain's home front are provided by the announcement that the transport board will supply twopenny meals for shelterers at eighty tube stations, and also that there have been fewer serious crimes in the last three months than since the outbreak of the war, though looting and pilfering after air raids increased last week.