Transport World Needs "Harmonizing"
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Co-ordination of Road and Rail Interests Main Debating Point at Dublin Congress
HOW transport's manpower and physical assets should be employed to secure the greatest advantage for the community was keenly debated at the Institute of Transport Congress in Dublin last week. This, said the presirent, Sir Reginald Wilson, was the first Institute conference to be held on Irish soil and was the largest of the post-war series.
In the unavoidable absence of Sir Brian Robertson his paper on the coordination of transport (a report of which was published in The Commercial, Motor last week) was presented by the chairman.
Sir Brian, he said, expressed a belief that all forms of transport must work together if the greatest public good were to be attained. In this respect " harmonize " was the key word, a word by no Means so strong as "integrate" Coordination had proved inevitable in advanced countries, and was one of the facts of-life that could not be evaded.
Did they, or did they not, asked Sir • Reginald, accept that co-ordination in some form was bound to exist? If not, what _system did they envisage arising as a result of freedom from control of investment, from licensing, and from the .obligation to carry? It might be felt that everything would be for the best if the matter were left to work itself out. Nothing in the paper should be regarded as suggesting that nationalization would be the answer to the problems set forth therein.
The first principle was that transport should be provided at the least cost to the community and should not be subsidized; the various elements should compete under equal conditions, said Brig.-Gen. Sir H. Osborne Mance.
Profit—or Perish?
In theory, if a form of transport did not pay it should be abolished. In practice it was necessary to maintain certain services. Who was to bear the losses on non-commercial facilities? The users of transport should not be expected to pay for them. They bad heard of ,proposals to limit activities of the C-licensees but Sir Osborne suggested that the ancillary user should go unrestricted provided he paid his way by ' making an appropriate contribution for the availability of public transport.
Pooling of track costs might go some way to providing the necessary machinery. In Germany,. where road transport tonnages were recorded, they levied a tax of about Id. per ton-mile on long-distance ancillary users' loads to compensate for the "creaming ' of traffic.
At present the U.K. and Holland had adopted a policy of free competition whereas Germany gave priority to the a20 regulation of transport in accordance with Government economic policy. We had our non-paying services whilst Germany appeared to be trying to establish fair competition, based on cost, between the various means for transport. It might be that the application of two policies would gradually approximate.
There were some countries (whose railway rates were regulated and published), continued Sir Osborne, which were contemplating controls over road transport similar to those exercised in the U.S.A. by the Inter-State Commerce Commission. Sir Brian appeared to accept the idea of a commission with similar powers, probably in the hope of escaping from principles and controls too much inspired by party politics.
It was certainly necessary to create without delay an objective permanent body, competent to advise the Government on transport policy and its implementation and qualified, like the I.S.C.C., to propose legislation.
Voluntary Cuts
The City of Glasgow, said Mr. E. R. L. Fitzpayne, had voluntarily given up a number of valuable suburban services on condition that certain suburban railways should be electrified. They understood that in due course Scottish Omnibuses would withdraw a number of local services. When this was done what was to stop small operators asking for licences to work into Glasgow?
Mr. Fitzpayne felt that in the circumstances they ought to have a board comparable with London Transport. Generally speaking, the working costs of the municipal operator were higher than those of the company operator; conditions of employment were better on the municipal side. The question was whether buses were to be run in the interests of the staff or the consumer. One of the troubles of the industry today was that the consumer was exercising his right to seek other means for transport.
If there were to be a transport board for Glasgow, urged Mr. James Amos, one of their objectives must be to avoid political influence. At all costs they must keep clear of subsidies. If a board were good for Glasgow he saw no reason why there should not be a board for the whole of Scotland.
Listening to some of the speakers that morning it might be imagined that there was no such thing as a licensing system, said Mr. W. F. Quin. Any operator who was aggrieved by a decision of the Traffic Commissioners or Licensing Authority knew he had the right of appeal. Some 20% of Scottish Omnibuses' mileage was unremunerative, a proportion that could not be afforded by a small organization. It a large number of small operators provided the services the amount of unremunerative mileage would have to be much less. There would appear to be some case for a board covering the industrial belt of Scotland. Discerning goods operators applied their own coordination, said Mr. Quin. If they had traffic from Glasgow to Aberdeen they first made sure that there were suitable vehicles coming into Glasgow to carry the loads on their return journey.
State ownership was more widespread in Ireland than in England, said Mr. Garret Fitzgerald. Nationalization was not a political issue in Ireland where the State had abandoned its traditional position of protecting the individual against the entrepreneur; it had become the biggest entrepreneur itself.
In the matter of the railways' position Ireland was worse off than other countries; in a negative sense she was, therefore, in advance of those countries.
There was a widespread need for coordination for all means for transport, urged Mr. G. B. Howden. Fewer Irish people used their railways and more went by road. If they did not have co-ordination of these services soon there would be few, if any, railways left there.
Mr. J. M. Birch raised a laugh when he said that it was the 31st day on which he had had the honour of being the only operator of a bus service into central London. For 27 years they had suffered the objections of the railways to applications for extensions and modifications of services. After that, it was annoying, from the road passenger operators' point of view, for suggestions to be made that they were in a privileged position.
Mr. David Blee contended that the nation could not afford so high a proportion of the working population to be engaged in transport or the excessive employment of capital in this sphere.
Undesirable Pressures
Summing up, Sir Reginald Wilson noted fairly general agreement on the need for regulation of some kind and on the idea that such regulation should be used for the better co-ordination of transport.
Going back to the 1930 Act, said Sir Reginald, the co-ordination there provided was to protect road passenger operators against each other and not the railways from the road operators. Mention had been made of a Scottish board that could inelude four municipalities. But to bring into a co-ordination scheme large municipalities meant that heavy pressures might arise, some of them from angles that could be undesirable. Reference had been made to fuel duty, but if the railways paid for their tracks only what the road operators paid in fuel duty the railways would be saving many millions of pounds a year.
If transport men could come to any degree of understanding among them'selves regarding how co-ordination could be carried out they Would have moved a considerable degree forward, said Sir Reginald. The paper brought them back to the fundamentals that faced both the transport community and the politicians.