'A Little More Spent on the Roads
Page 33
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THE Report on the Administration of the Road Fund for 1951-52, published by the Stationery Office, price 2s. 6c1., states that payments from the Road Fund towards expenditure on the maintenance and minor improvement of trunk and classified roads during the year ended March last were increased by £4.5m. Payments for trunk roads totalled over item. Of this total, more than f.:8rn was for maintenance and minor improvements, an increase of nearly £.1.8m. compared with 1950-51.
Grants to highway authorities totalled £17,628,000, compared with £15,825,000 in 1950-51. Of this total, £15,496,000 was for maintenance and minor improvement work, and £1,548,000 for major improvement, new construction, etc. The corresponding figures for 1950.-51 were £12,849,000 and £2,400,000. The average expenditure per mile on maintenance, repair and minor improvement of roads other than trunk roads throughout the country in 1950-51 was £248.
During the year the Minister • of Transport authorized 96 new schemes of trunk-road major improvement, estimated to cost £592,064, and the preparation, at a cost of £152,702, including land acquisition, of 40 schemes for future improvements. Preliminary survey and road-location work to fix the future lines of trunk roads was continued. About 800 miles of the trunk-road system were surveyed in detail. Further progress was also made with the work of preparing special road schemes under the Special Roads Act, 1949.
ROAD TRANSPORT STRANGLED
TRANSPORT was being bedevilled 1 by political theories, the system changing with each Government, said Mr. C. T. Hurnpidge, general manager of Bradford Transport Department, at the annual dinner of the North-Eastern centre of the Institute of Road Transport Engineers, at Leeds, last Friday. He added that each Government seemed to do its best to strangle road transport by inflicting heavy taxes and giving the money received to others, white the roads were being neglected. Merely knocking out the black spots was not road development.
Mr. F. Smales, centre chairman, said that the vast movement of labour and goods in the Yorkshire area and elsewhere would not have been possible unless road transport had built up' its remarkable network of services.
BRITAIN LAGS IN VEHICLE INCREASE
"THE rate of increase of road traffic in this country compares unfavourably with the rest of the world," said Mr. R. Gresham Cooke, director of the Society of Motor Manufacturers and Traders, speaking at Stockton-on-Tees, on Monday, to the Incorporated Sales Managers' Association.
"Out of 79 countries, no less than 72 of them have in the past four years increased the numbers of their motor vehicles faster than Britain. The limit ing policy adopted towards motors means that this country is going forward at the same rate as Bolivia, Chile and the Argentine," he said.
"Cars and lorries are unique in this country in that they carry three forms of taxation, first by purchase tax when they are bought, 'secondly by licence duty when they are put into use, and thirdly through petrol and oil -taxes every day," he continued. "Motor users as a class are rather tired at being so honoured as to contribute Is. 6d. in the pound of all the national revenue, as well as paying their income tax, rates and other taxes."
OBITUARY
WE regret to record the death of Irr MR, J. T. PEXPER and MR. WHYRED Su tti.
Mr. Pepper was the first chairman of Nottingham Sub-area of the Road Haulage Association. He was also sub-area chairman of Associated Road Operators for eight years and chairman of the R.H.A. East' Midland finance committee until 1947. He was 62.
Mr. Smith was cost accountant and buyer for Lancashire United Transport Co., Ltd., and secretary of the Transport Golfing Society (Lancashire and Cheshire area). He was killed in a road accident near Walsall, last Friday.