Call For Bold Road Planning
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PAA CALL for a "Dr. Beeching of the Roads" was made on Wednesday by Lord Stonham. " I regard such an appointment as an urgent and a major priority," he said during a Lords debate on road accidents.
Though the Government, through Dr. Beeching, was very properly conducting an extensive inquiry into railway, costs, it had ordered no such inquiry into the real cost to the nation of the use of the roads, he said. Without the evidence which such an inquiry would reveal, no important decisions about transport could have any validity.
He claimed that the cost to the nation of roads was about 20 times the present railway loss and four times as much as the total paid in oil duties and motor vehicle taxes.
Powerful Lobby The fact that everyone knew about rail subsidies but very few were aware of the subsidies to the road users was entirely attributable to the efforts of the Government, aided by one of the most persistent, powerful and successful lobbies this country had ever known—the British Road Federation.
Lord Stonham said he was not suggesting that road users should be required to pay the entire costs of the roads, but an equitable distribution of transport costs would provide an ideal solution to the road-rail problem and also help to reduce road casualties. He believed the Minister of Transport was beginning to think so too.
C-licensees His Target
He made no criticism of Aand Blicensed holders, who were an essential part of a co-ordinated transport system and as much victims of the present policy as were the railways. His criticism was directed to the heavily subsidized, uncontrolled expansion of C-licensed vehicles. Many of these vehicles did up to 40 per cent empty mileage but the real cost of running them was concealed.
For the past 20 years, at least, transport had been bedevilled with politics a id vested interests, went on Lord Stonham. Was it. not time, in the interests of the nation, that we forgot politics, stood back and looked at transport as a whole? If the Government would give an assurance that they would call a halt to this present madneSs of shoving more and more traffic on the roads, and that their final decisions would be made objectively on the basis of all the facts, the debate might well be one of the most important to the people of this country held in the Lords for a long time.
Lord Lucas of Chilworth, who opened the debate, claimed that 50 per cent of commercial vehicles were overladen. In his view they should be taxed on their gross laden weights—which should he marked by a metal plate on their sides.
Lord Chesham replied for the Government.