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PLAIN INTENT
Page 77
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Political Commentary By JANUS
OUT of sight but not out of mind, Mr. Ernest Marples, Minister of Transport, has succeeded in keeping his name regularly before the British public while he was several thousand miles away seeing for himself what the
• Americans are doing • to solve, their transport problems. From what has been published it might appear that he was chiefly concerned with traffic congestion. He plainly intends, as soon as Parliament gives him the necessary authority, to apply over a wider area of London, and if possible in other large towns and cities, the lessons learned from the parking-meter and parking-zone schemes. .
Clearly he has not materially changed the views he held before setting out on his journey. His order of priorities is commendable. He has begun with road congestion, which, although it may not be the most serious transport problem, is certainly the one causing the most public concern. If Mr. Marples can make some visible impression on it, even at the cost of restricting the freedom of the road user, he will find the public more receptive to some of his other ideas. Little is known of these so far, and perhaps Mr. Marples has still to clarify them completely in his own mind.
He has not confined his conversation in America to traffic experts, but has shown an interest in all branches of transport. His tour may have helped him to get his ideas into focus. He will have discovered that transport problems are fundamentally the same the world over, with occasional variations. The road-rail controversy, for example, is as familiar to Americans as it is in Britain, but they are, if anything, more outspoken on the subject. The American rail interests are more frankly dedicated to the subversion of road transport.
In addition to restrictions similar in kind and purpose to the British licensing system, road operators in America are subject to many irksome regulations, and with some justice blame thein upon the railways. The most ws11' known, and the most irritating, are the limitations on the weights of vehicles. Each State has its own maximum, so that careful calculations have to be made for a long— distance' journey with a heavy load.
Notorious Coup
Railway manipulation of State prejudice against road transport has a long history, dating back even before the institution of the American equivalent of licensing, _One of the earliest and most notorious coups by the railways was the Texas' law allowing the carriage by road of a load of 14,000 lb., provided the destination was a rail terminal.
Otherwise the limit was 7,000 lb. .
The American railways, that seem to stop at nothing in their efforts to embarrass or suppress their competitors, are far from being in a desperate state. According to one report, the president of the Wabash Railroad has boasted that his industry has still to reach its peak. Rail traffic in 1935, he says, amounted to 1,427m. 'tons; in. 1958, in spite of streamlining and staff reductions, the railways carried 2,204m. tons. This seems to indicate that there is still hope for the railways, even if so many of them are operating at a toss.
If the claim that the American railways are expanding reached Mr. Marples' ears, he could still not regard it as representative of world transport. In most countries. including Britain, the railways are declining in importance and are carrying less traffic each year. The not very happy story-of the British Transport Commission has been set out by them year after year in their reports. The number of passengers carried by train has not varied greatly over the past 10 yeari, but the tonnage of goods carried has fallen inexorably, especially in the past year or so.
Much the •aatne has been happening in most countries of Europe, where the transport situation in 1958 has recently been analysed by the Economic Commission for Europe. Passenger traffic both on the railways and the roads remained stable during the year in most countries. So far. as goods transport was concerned,. there was. a marked difference between the two forms of. transport. The volume carried by rail declined-appreciably; whereas there was a small increase in the volume of .goods -that went by road.
As usual, the figures that the E.C.E. have been able to obtairi for road transport are —scanty, ill-matched, and possibly unreliable. The figure of 1,000m: tons given for Britain is obviously taken from the survey by the Ministry of Transport. That is to say, it is based on the activities of 0.6 per cent, of the country's fleet .,of road, vehicles during the course of. a singleweek. Some countries have given statistics for all road vehicles, others only for Laingdistance transport, or '(in the. case of Norway) scheduled services.
Accurate Reflection
The figures for each country are consistent enough to show that they accurately reflect the trend. One interesting point that emerges is that, over the whole field of goods transport in Europe, there was a fall in traffic .in spite of a general increase in economic activity. The reasons given by E.C.E. are worth examination. The trend was observed two years previously, but was. not so obvious as in 1958 when for the first time, say, the a growth in industrial production was accompanied by an actual fall
in -the. total traffic. , , There was a substantial _reduction in coal transport and smaller reductions in the tonnages of certain father_ raw materials. In every country petroleum products are increasingly taking the place of coal, , As petroleum products go much further than coal, weight for; weight, they need less transport, and the point is underlined by the fact that coal has often to be carried for long' .distances. Increasing use is also being made of .pipelines.. They carried less than I per cent. of, the total of petroleum products in most European countries during 1958, but in the opinion of the E.C.E. the figure will reach between
4 per pent. and 5 per cent. within 1015 years. .
An interesting trend was observed in Western Germany, where full statistics are systematically kept of the 'work done by vehicles permitted to operate beyond a radius of about 30 miles (50 kilometres) from -their base.' During 1958, the tonnage those vehicles carried rose from 777781m., or by just under 2 per cent. The ton-mileage increased in roughly the same proportion.• The rise was limited to transport for hire or reward, which went up by
3 per cent., to a total of 58+m. tons in 1958, in spite of a fall in the tonnage of iron, steel and coal; the volume of foodstuffs, petroleum products and building materials carried went up substantially. . • Transport on own account, on the other hand, declined by la per cent. to a total Of 20M. tons. The explanation of the Western German trend, according to the E.C.E., is to be found in the system of taxation, which is based upon the ton-mileage, and was increased in April, 1958, from
4 to -5 pfennig per ton-kilometre.