1969 and All That—Pt 3

We continue our look at the Transport Act 1968 that saw the creation 40 years ago of NBC and PTEs

Section 34 of the Transport Act 1968 for the first time gave the government and district & county councils the ability to subsidise socially necessary rural bus services. This recognised that far from all rural bus services in England were covering their costs and that cross-subsidy in some areas was not robust enough in every case.

This was as well because, unlike the at PTEs, the newly created National Bus Company subsidiaries had to break even one year with the next. Throughout the sixties, this was becoming increasingly difficult to do and some subsidiaries availed themselves of S.34 subsidy as soon as it became available in May 1971.

Measures were further enhanced by the Local Government Act 1972, which gave local government the power to subsidise networks, rural and urban. This was available from 1974 and marked the beginning—35 years ago this year—of the council transport departments as we know them.

It’s of particular interest that, as the 1970s progressed, subsidies rose exponentially in spite of the mass introduction of one man operation (as it then was known), the phasing out of double decks, cuts in service and fares greatly exceeding inflation.