The Illinois Commerce Commission has authorized higher fares on Bloomington-Normal City Lines buses pending final decision on the company's request for a permanent fare increase. This indicates that the permanent increase is looked upon with favor.

The higher fares present a challenge both to the bus company and the citizens.

The bus company should do everything possible to provide better service to more areas of the community. One good proposal for accomplishing this is outlined in the City Plan. We urge the company to give it careful consideration and to adopt it or an equally good plan.

The citizens must decide whether they want bus service in Bloomington-Normal. If they want it they must patronize the buses. By so doing they can help relieve the downtown traffic congestion.

The alternative is clear. That is no bus service at all. For if the people will not patronize the buses for a private company, there is no reason to think they would do so if the buses were operated by the municipal governments of Bloomington and Normal.

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*Bloomington Pantagraph, July 28.

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No city has solved its downtown auto traffic problem. Peoria, like others, is trying and has made improvements, but we can foresee no way to cope with the huge increase of motor vehicles predicted within the next ten years.

When our downtown area was built, no one dreamed of the traffic the streets would have to carry. The immensity of the parking problem would have been laughed at if it had been predicted.

In 1946, this newspaper was saying that growing lack of parking space would within ten years make itself felt as a deterrent to downtown shopping. That has proven to be true, not only in Peoria but in most cities. Accessibility to downtown shopping areas is now estimated as about one-half what it was ten years ago.

Providing more off-street parking space is a partial and temporary answer. But radically different thinking will give the final answer, and it will give much more consideration to public transit.

Possibly Roger Babson sounded the keynote with his statement: "Within five to ten years no parking of private autos will be permitted within a mile of downtown."

The same thing was said in another way by Mayor Daley of Chicago: "If our main shopping centers are not to be half office buildings and half garages, we must develop public transportation that is fast and efficient and economical."

The solution of these problems is more difficult because not a progressive move can be made without stepping on a good many sensitive toes. But growing restrictions on private transportation will be inevitable if the necessary emphasis is to be given to the development of public transit. Eventually Peoria and other cities must think in terms of the movement of people rather than the movement of vehicles.

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*Peoria Journal, July 27.