Road and rail ticket interchangeability

[whole diary]

[grahame]

How apparently sensible to allow road and rail tickets along the same route to be interchangeable ...

From Western Region, 1967 timetable:





When and why did this facility get withdrawn?  How much money was saved by withdrawing it?  Would it be useful for passengers today?  Is this another baby that got thrown out with the bathwater?

[Andrew1939 from West Oxon]

Much of the interchangeability goes back to the days when the rail companies owned bus companies that operated in conjunction with the rail services to provide feeder traffic and alternative modes, particularly useful where the rail services were not that frequent. I used the facility to travel by rail froim Taunton to Bridgwater when I had missed the last bus home from Taunton. In the west country, GWR^▸ (Great Western Railway) owned the Western National Bus Co whilst the Southern owned the Southern National. I used to wonder (before I learnt of this historical reason) why Southern National provided bus services in Dorset and also north Devon whilst Westerm National ran bus services in West Somerset and Cornwall. The main non-National bus company operator in the west country was Devon General running services from Exeter and it looks from the services shown above that the Devon General (not owned by a rail company but by the giant BET group, I think) also pariticipated in these very sensible arrangements when public transport's first priority was to serve the user rather than today when the priority is to serve the shareholders first and the public is a very poor second priority.

[Electric train]

Done forget the British Transport Commission set up in 1949 which lasted until 1962 Richard Beeching was its last Chairman, the BTC was split but still remained largely public bodies, the integration of rail and bus was perpetuated until 1969 when National Bus was formed and the bus deregulation through the 1970's and 80's which I guess just drove dis-integration based on the wonderful concept of competition.

[JayMac]

Not to forget that even today, many places not served by rail still have a combined rail and bus through fare. Although sadly these can only be purchased from staffed railway stations (possibly via Avantix^▸ (Ticket Issuing System used on board trains) on board trains as well), so are of little use if you want to start your journey from the non rail served location.