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THE MINISTER ON ROAD TRANSPORT.

12th April 1921, Page 17
12th April 1921
Page 17
Page 18
Page 17, 12th April 1921 — THE MINISTER ON ROAD TRANSPORT.
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Which of the following most accurately describes the problem?

he Importance which the Ministry Attaches to the Road, and the Part which the Commercial Motor User is Playing.

'' I ERIC GEDDES, the Minister of Transport, E1 to have been the chief guest at the annual luncheon of the Commercial Motor Users Associati , but the labour crisis detained him, and he wrot the following letter to the chairman, who decid6d to read it to the gathering :— " DEAR. MR. SERAPNELL-SlenT11,—I cannot bell you how ery much I regret that the present national emer ency makes it absolutely impossible for me to come jto your luncheon, and equally impossible for Sir Heni Maybury—whom, 1 am sure, you -would have welco ed as a substitute—to take my place. I am the nore regretful at. my inability to come because I had hoped on this occasion to make what I believe would have been my last speech to you as Minister of Transport, and to tell you what 1, with the able and, devoted co-operation of Sir Hexiry Maybury and the Roads Department of the Ministry, with the assistance' of your own and other mechanical transport Organizations, and with the help of the local authorities, have. been trying to do for the development of road transport in this country.

The Ministry' g Attitude Towards Road Transport.

You. personally, I. think, know that you have-no more sincere friends or well-wishers than myself and the Dads Department of the Ministry. Whatever we h ve done in connection with road transport has been Jone With the sole object-of endeavouring to aid it in its development. Whether we have always been wise in what we have done, I cannot say ;• whether in the main we have laid sound foundations, history will tell. We have followed in the footsteps of the Road Beard; we largely adopted their aims, and adapted the Measures to attain those aims to the changed conditions following the war.

" 111 ds---like every other form of movement in this c untry, the railways, tramways, canals, and the move ent of power from place to place through the rnedi m of electrical energy—have all grown up on a locajlized, parochial basis, but they, are, all through, conti :nous processes and should be. interchangeable. They re all the victims of the 'break of gauge ' due to th ir parochial growth. There has been no real national attempt to abolish this break of gauge.' Each local authority has developed on its own lines; the rich ones have done. much for roads, the poor ones have been unable to do much, and their interests have not always been. to develop national through routes, hut rather those more important to their local needs.

" To obtain a national system of roads, a, national policy was necessary. The burden of road improvement–hand, indeed, of maintaining the roads at all —with the great increase of mechanical traction following the war, was obviously too heavy a task for the local authorities. It was no use attempting to claisify roads on a national basis unless some national share was to be taken in the development. The classification of roads is now complete, and the perce tage of first-class and second-class roads is as follow England and Wales ... 1st class roads, 11.6 per cent.

2nd „ >1 7.0 It Scotland 1st „ „ 17.9 )) 71 2nd „ " 13.1 2) " To assist the local authorities in improving these roads and bringing them on to the same gauge throughout (by 'gauge,' I mean a uniform standard of excellence as regards alignment, gradients, surface, camber, and strength) money wasnecessary, and I think it has seldom, if ever, before been found in the history of taxation that the people who were going to be taxed were on the whole the greatest supporters of the measure!

"The old petrol taxes; yielded some £2,500,000 a year. The new taxes were estimated to yield .28,500,000 a year gross, and up to the end of March, 1921, they, in fact, yielded 27,7e.5,000, leaving only £750,000 more to be raised from quarterly licences. This sum should readily be attained, as quarterly licences for the first two months of the year yielded well over £200,000.

" We may, therefore, say that the estimated yield from the new taxation is about as accurate as such an estimate could have been, and also, as far as one may judge, that the whole of the additional burden has fallen upon the. commercial motor users and not upon the private motor owners, which latter class provided the greater portion of the previous taxation but are to-day, as a whole, not paying any increase amount proportionately.

"Now, in return, what hare the commercial motor users obtained for their increased taxation I We are to-day on the threshold of a vast improvement in reads. For the first time, the maintenance as well as the improvement on a national basis of through routes—of a 'throughout gauge,' to continue my nieta,phor—has been adopted, and, in addition, an estimated .21,250,000a year out of the fruits of this taxation, is allotted to contributions toward's new arterial roads.

Vast Annual Expenditure on Roads.

" Since, the armistice vast sums have been spent upon roads out of accumulated funds or special grants and through the increased efforts of local authorities. In the financial year 1913-14 the expenditure on roads was £19,000,000 sterling, in 1919-20 it was 233,400,000, and in 1920-21 it is estimated at £45,000,000 sterling.

" These sums are colossal. They represent a great effort upon the part of the local authorities, and at the came time a very great effort from the road users. Without this expenditure I cannot think what the state of our roads would have been. Moreover, with the valuable comparative cost figures which we obtain, and which the Ministry is able to check and criticise .by comparison of district with district, the local authorities are enabled to exercise greater and increasing economy in this very important work.

" Any impartial observer cannot but admit that, considering the years of war and the tremendous increase of traffic, the roads of the country are showing, as a whole, remarkable improvement.. We, have a great deal of lee-way to make up, but with the increasing number of motor vehicles, with the improvement inroad service, and the decreased wear of the road following upon the general introduction of rubber or improvedtyres, I feel that, not only may the road users look forward to a continued great improvement of roads, bat also to the probability of a reduction inithe scale of the tax.

" Apart, however, from this, the road users have obtained other statutory advantages. Local restrictions and the local point of view in imposing conditions upon commercial motor users before allowing them to use their roads are guarded against by appeal to a central authority. You are paying substantially to maintain and improve the roads, and you have been safeguarded against local prejudice. We have wiped off, out of the proceeds of motor taxation, the whole of what was known as the ` assigned revenues' to the local authorities, and now all licence fees and penalties for. motoring offences which used to go to the local authorities, come to the central fund. The old complaint, which may or may not have had justification, that panalities imposed locally on motorists went to the benefit of the locality can no longer he made.

"These are only some of the comparatively minor advantages. Thet great outstanding feature is this: that, for the first time, we now have a national system of through roads, and we have the funds from which a fair and very important contribution can be made to the local authorities. The -restrictions as to the free use of roads and the parochial interest have been eliminated, and, with these great foundations laid, I think we may look forward with confidence to a steady improvement and development in road transport. After I relinquish my office on the 15th August, I hope that I shall see this development and improvement continuing upon the lines which—with the help of Sir Henry Maybury and the Roads Department, the motor transport industry, and the local authorities—it has-been my privilege to initiate.

" Before concluding,. 'would like, on behalf of myself and Sir Henry Vayleury, to thank you and the Commercial Motor Users Association for the oeverfailing help and co-operation which you have given us.

" Yours sincerely, " (Signed) ERIC GEDDES. " E. S. Shrapnell-Smith, Esq., C.B.E., " Commercial Motor Users Association, "50, Pall Mall, S.W.1."


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