Government to Present New Rail Plan in Two Weeks: Tax Likely
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BY OUR POLITICAL CORRESPONDENT
WE shall see the Government's new plan for the railways by the end of the month, probably at the same time as the Guillebaud report. Only the rail strike threat has held it up. It will contain an up-to-the-minute assessment of what the railways can expect to carry when modernization is complete.
The plan, therefore, will take into account the ground that has been lost to road transport, which now carries 56 per cent. of commercial traffic.
Modernization will be scaled down where the roads have won, will be speeded up where the railways still lead— and the railways' battle is not entirely lost for they are able, through their new elasticity in charging, to compete much more effectively in some directions.
There is more and more support among back-benchers for some Government help to the railways. One favoured proposition, put up at a meeting of the Transport Committee of Tory M.P.s during the week, is that the Government should take over responsibility for maintaining the rail track, which costs the railways €100m. a year.
The Government would then, it is suggested, impose on the railways a tax equivalent to the tax on diesel oil, to raise about £30m. Road and rail would then be on a par, and the railways would benefit from the transaction by £70m. a year. The only alternative to some such scheme is to make vicious cuts in services.
Mr. Thorneycroft's exposition on the rail trouble has come badly unstuck. His attack on the Government in The Times, on Monday, failed to attract more than a handful of supporters.
• Lords Hear of New System A new form of transport said to have been invented in Salisbury by Rhodesian engineers created a flutter of interest in the Lords on Monday. Lord Hawke asked the Government if they knew anything about it. The reply was that Mr. Marples had some details about it, and had asked for more.
From Lord Milverton it transpired that patents have been taken out all over the world, and that there is to be a working model on show at next year's Central African Fair.
No one knew what this new form of transport was, but Lord Hawke wondered if it would do for transport between London and London Airport, or to link overspill areas with their mother cities.