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Congestion costs
Page 28
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IN THE ENTIRE universe there are very few absolutes. Virtually everything is measured relative to something else and the cost value allocated to congestion (CM 6 November) is no exception.
Although the intention is well meaning, giving congestion a monetary value is largely meaningless. Its effects are judged on how journey times compare with some other time.Whether you compare with five years ago. the day you were born, when the first motorway opened, or any other time in the past different values will be obtained.
Any reduction in journey time needs to be seen in the context of how the time saved is put to use. Many see more road building as a panacea. As long ago as 1988.a pandincluding the vicechairman of the Road Haulage Association, was calling for just 340 miles of motorway Decades later, the prospect of the M25 was seen as solving London's congestion. Each solution proposed is later found to be part of the problem.
Much congestion is attributable to society itself and to successive government policies. Consumers are deemed to want competition in the expectation of reduced prices. Look inside any curtainsider and you will see near identical goods-particularly food and household items being ferried over long distances in opposite directions.Any savings due to competition are lost in the cost of the attend ant environmental health and pollution caused.The pursuit of free trade means that manufactured goods are shunted around half the world rather than local produce used for local people in the name of consumer choice.
Congestion is indeed a problem, but it needs to be seen in a wider context than just the view from the cab of the balance sheet of an individual company.
Anthony G Phillips Salisbury,Wifts