TRANSPORTATION ENGINEERING CONFERENCE
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The Transportation Engineering Conference, organized by the Institution of Civil Engineers in association with Traffic Engineering and Control, which closes today, was opened on Tuesday by Mr. Richard Marsh, Minister of Transport.
Subjects discussed included Trans portation Studies a review of results to date from typical areas; Technological and Operational Advances in Public Transport: Economics (road track costs); Road Utilization; Education and Training; and The Integration of Freight Movement. Seventeen papers in all have been delivered at the Conference.
Running concurrently with the Conference, which is being held at Central Hall, Westminster, is an exhibition of traffic engineering and control systems.
We print below extracts from some of the papers concerned with road transport.
Finding the facts
The first two sessions of the conference were devoted to the subject of Transportation Studies—a review of results to date from typical areas. Four papers were given, the authors being Mr. B. V. Martin, manager, department of highways and transportation, GLC: Mr. Neville Borg, city engineer, surveyor and planning officer, Birmingham; Mr. J. E. F. Anderson, city engineer and surveyor, Belfast and Mr. Roy Spence, head of transportation study unit, Ministry of Transport.
Mr. Martin described the London Traffic Survey which has been completed in three phases, the last phase being called the London Transportation Study. Mr. Martin stated that they had moved gradually from a point of very limited knowledge to a point of considerable knowledge, and evolved to a stage where the knowledge and techniques could evaluate major alternatives and provide the decision maker with a large part of the information necessary to make investment decisions.
Undoubtedly, one of the main benefits of the work had been the quite remarkable change in both the general and professional understanding of transport in London. London Transport was particularly involved with phase. I, and both LTB and British Railways were more directly involved in phase II as the work began to take on a more comprehensive nature. However, phase III developed the closest relationships between LTB, BR, the Ministry of Transport and the GLC.
Mr. Martin said that even quite massive public transport improvements could not eliminate a large proportion of car journeys. These were, of course, overall results, and conditions within particular areas or corridors could almost certainly be influenced quite significantly by investment in appropriate public transport services. Nevertheless the lesson for politicians and decision makers was that the problem of a car-owning society could not be approached only by improving public transport.
Mr. Borg described the West Midlands conurbation study, the study area including the whole of the continuously built-up area of the West Midlands conurbation—some 375 sq.miles. Many of the conclusions were similar to those of the London surveys. A comparison of generation rates for the West Midlands and London had been made and showed remarkable similarity, particularly when the differences in public transport .facilities were considered in the two areas. This comparison would suggest that trip rates might be similar, in Britain at least, and this theory had been strengthened by further study work in the West Midlands where trip rates gained from the urban study area have been applied to rural areas in North Worcestershire.
Freezing out the bus?
A point made by Mr. Borg was that buses (carrying at present 57 per cent of the total daily trips), had no reserved routes and were in the situation that, before the hypothetical traffic volumes on the general road system could reach the volumes predicted, they would be virtually frozen out as an acceptable means of transport because of their lower speed, relative to that of the general traffic. This was unless preferential measures were applied, combined with selective car parking policies, and unless they were supplemented by systems not now in use in the West Midlands.
The steering committee of the West Midlands Study was formed of representatives of 10 local authorities, the Ministries of Transport and of Housing and Local Government, British Railways and Midland Red.
Mr. Anderson described the Belfast Transportation Study which started in the latter part of 1965 and will be completed when the plan is published in mid-1968. Progress up to November 1967 was reported by the speaker.
Of 3,000 public transport trips reported, only 150 (5 per cent) were made by people who had private vehicles available. From the opinions of travel by bus and private car reported in the survey, and the reasons given for owning or not owning a vehicle, it was apparent that people did not generally consider public transport and the car to be competitive modes of transport, but rather as serving different purposes.
Bus passengers accounted for half of all motorized travel in the city and the Belfast Corporation Transport undertaking was selfsupporting. A realistic view of the choice between public and private transport indicated that there was no clear-cut way in which public transport could be made so attractive that the demand for the use of private vehicles could be reduced in the future.
The paper presented by Mr. Spence was entitled "A critical assessment' and was a description of the historical background to the programme of urban transportation studies which got under way in Britain in 1964. Mr. Spence discussed the three studies already mentioned, together with others taking place, in other parts of the country.
New facilities needed
On Wednesday the subject discussed was Technological and Operational Advances in Public Transport. The first paper was by Mr. L. K. Bridwell, federal highway administrator, Department of Transportation, Washington, USA. Mr. Bridwell said that transportation needs within and between the major metropolitan areas of the United States could not be handled by the car alone. The tremendous rate of growth of the country's urban areas, coupled with the decline of existing public transport facilities made the provision of new facilities essential, Mr. Bridwell said that the Federal Government had been working with local officials throughout the nation in an extensive programme of research, development and demonstration of new public transportation facilities. Some of these were "unconventional" transportation systems, and others were forms of rapid transit and suburban railway systems.
On the subject of express bus operations, the speaker said that there were no exclusive bus lanes in operation on freeways. However, there were exclusive bus lanes on down-town streets in 14 cities, either on an all-day or peak-hour basis. Experience with such installations had indicated that a 10-30 per cent reduction in travel time for buses could be achieved, with a similar and sometimes greater reduction for other vehicles.
Since the bus was a highway vehicle, highway user revenues could and should be spent to provide for its use and the use of private cars in such a way as to improve the productivity of highways wherever possible.
In some cases, special ramps had been constructed to allow express buses to enter the freeways closer to the city centres.
Mr. W. Moller, city councillor and executive department offficer for utilities and transport, Frankfurt-on-Main, delivered a paper describing how the problems of public transport were being handled in the Federal Republic of Germany. He was afraid that only as a result of personal 'annoyance could you expect people to become aware of the necessity of good public transport.
Most of Mr. Moller's paper described railway and tramway developments in Germany, including city centre subways and tunnels. Prior to the decision in favour of expensive tunnel construction, several cities had examined the question as to whether their local traffic problems might be solved by an efficient bus system. Advanced development of vehicles, including articulated buses and double-deckers resulted in increased capacity of buses.
Experience showed, however, that sufficient attractiveness and efficiency could only be achieved if buses were assigned a lane of their own or even extra tunnels. To date no city had favoured the construction of tunnel systems for buses. The use of buses for rapid transit systems had been virtually dismissed in Germany.
No cross-fertilization in UK
Mr. W. M. Little, chairman, Scottish Bus Group, delivered a paper entitled "UK road passenger transport". This was largely a history of the development of the present public road transport system in Great Britain. Mr. Little said that purely local and longer distance services had emerged from separate historical backgrounds and hence had developed, to a degree, different philosophies. There had been virtually no cross-fertilization between the structures.
Despite the difficulties in maintaining traffic movement, operators were themselves al, ready trying to fill the more obvious gaps with new types of service provision. To take two examples only—the London Red Arrow experiment, now to be considerably extended; and the developments in Manchester using specialized double-deck vehicles with mechanical fare collection.
As a matter of basic development, it seemed that there could be no escape from positive allocation of much greater movement space for public street transport. There seemed to be a reluctance on the part of responsible authority to face this problem.
More costly roads
The results of recent research studies were discussed in a paper "Road Track Costs" presented by Mr. C. D. Foster, director general of economic planning, Ministry of Transport.
Mr. Foster said it was possible that the construction cost of extra road capacity will be higher than it had been in the past because roads in future would have to be built in less favourable locations. Ministry of Transport research on flow relationship between road construction costs and various features, such as terrain, showed that a high proportion of scheme cost variability could be explained in terms of geographical features such as rise and fall and number of water crossings.
The Ministry had estimated that 171 per cent of rural motorway costs was due to the need to provide for heavy vehicles, but roughly half of roadbuilding occurred in urban areas where the proportion attributable to heavy vehicles would be affected by the higher costs of land. Some work inside the Ministry suggested that the proportion of attributable costs was rather higher than for motorways because, primarily, a higher proportion of the cost was concerned with carriageway strengthening to cope with the loadings imposed by heavy vehicles.
It was often overlooked, said Mr. Foster, that accurate data did not exist on the effect of axle loadings imposed on road surfaces by particular classes of heavy vehicle. Even medium-weight vehicles imposed very high and often excessive axle loadings but the total wear and tear effect was normally less than that of the heaviest vehicles, whatever power law was used to determine their relative cost responsibility.
The transportation policies being evolved as part of the Greater London Development Plan accept the impracticability of attempting to meet the unrestrained desire for movement by private motorists, said Mr. J. S. Moulder, of the department of Highways and Transportation, Greater London Council, in a paper: "Route integration in a built-up environment". Unnacceptably vast investment would be required involving loss by destruction of capital assets in the form of property and social assets in the form of areas of high amenity.
Motorway buses
Mr. Moulder described a technique used to establish an optimum route for a motorway, with reference to the link between the A2 trunk road at Falconwood and the M1 motorway at the North Circular Road. High-speed single-decker buses would use the motorway, with stops at selected points in bus bays with their own deceleration and acceleration lanes. Passenger access to the bus stops would be by escalators or stairs as the stops would be only at interchanging points with other public transport facilities.
Four papers on the integration of freight movement presented today, Friday, provided an invaluable summary of current and projected developments in road, rail and air transport and in port organization.
In his paper on road transport integration, Mr. T. G. Gibb, general manager of British Railways Freightliner division, gave details of the extent of parcels and sundries freight traffic in Britain. The Post Office handled 220 m. parcels annually, with strict limits as to weight and dimensions and no signature on delivery. British Rail's passenger train parcels services handled 105 m. parcels, providing an express collection and delivery service with generous weight and dimensional limits and with delivery signatures. BR's Freight Sundries services handled 150 m. packages carrying almost anything anywhere and with signatures at either end. BRS Parcels Ltd handled 100 m. packages providing distribution on virtually a nation-wide basis including signatures at either end, whilst privately owned parcels carriers were estimated to carry 75 m. packages a year, Mr. Gibb said that the privately owned parcels carriers tended to offer specialized quick delivery services on a more selective basis than the State road or rail services, but collectively they offered a distribution service covering most of Britain—an instance of successful integration within a quite small part of the road haulage industry. Sheer volume would preclude any immediate attempt to move all this traffic through one service.
Dealing with integrated freight movements, Mr. Gibb said it was sometimes possible to eliminate overlapping services, bringing together two undertakings or parts thereof so that they functioned as one. Integrated working was undertaken to overcome some barrier, to increase the horizons of the small operator, to improve a service or to take advantage of the best of more than one method of movement. Service integration could be largely a matter of planning and administration whilst the ability to use more than one means of movement depended upon technical development and the production of the necessary equipment. Mr. Gibb stressed that in using equipment there could be hidden penalties which reduced the efficiency of one movement in isolation but improved the overall result. Therefore the ability to look at the result as a whole was vital.
Container-carrying dangers
There was an unseen and largely unsuspected danger to road hauliers in the carrying of containers unless some relaxation of permitted axle loading was allowed, said the speaker. With a penalty of £200 in the offing this was something that operators and also legislators should take to heart.
Instancing the 20 ft ISO container with a gross weight of 20 tons moving on a 30 tons gvw artic outfit Mr. Gibb said that with a 32 ft. outer axle spacing and a trailer platform length of about 31ft., there was plenty of scope in placing the 20ft. container. But axle loadings of the vehicle front, driving and rear bogie might not exceed 5, 10 and 18 tons respectively, leaving only 3 tons in hand compared with the gross permitted weight. Hence there was little to play with as regards load distribution, and whilst it would be possible to load containers so as to bring each axle loading within the permitted weight, the probability was that this would not happen, and if the container were not evenly loaded the risk of excess axle loadings was magnified.
Dealing with rail freight integration, Mr. Ft. A. Long, chief planning manager, British Railways Board, stressed that increased industrial productivity in the mid 70s would lead to a 12 per cent increase in freight ton mileage. He foresaw a significant change in the quality of demand. "Services which are only just adequate today will be quite unacceptable in the future, or will be accepted only if no effective alternatives are available".
Because of an anticipated rise in labour costs labour intensive industries would be squeezed very hard, suggesting an increased size of unit in transport and the adaptability of the system to automation. Another factor was that increases in income and leisure would make more unattractive any career demanding work at time at which others were at play. "Transport, with its round-the clock service, will have particular reasons for being less labour intensive than most industries," Commending recent experiments in night deliveries, Mr. Long saw developments leading to concentration of road vehicles at peripheral points with directional flows of collections and deliveries from and to city centres so that several vehicles did not call each day at the same premises with small quantities of traffic. Rail would make some impact by developing peripheral or in-town concentration centres, relieving the streets of through traffic. He revealed that BR had carried out a survey to establish how future Freightliner depots in the London area could best be located to minimize road movements. Also, there were possibilities of in-town rail terminals well sited to deal with railborne materials for building London's motorways.
Mr. Long described the development of Freightliner services and suggested a closer definition of road /rail integration would now be: "Throughout conveyance of freight from source to destination, where rail is used for trunk movement and transfer to and /or from road transport takes place at public sidings". For this purpose, the public siding must be widely interpreted as a container depot, a passenger station or a concentration centre for rail /road transfer.
It was already clear, said the speaker, that there would be sufficient concentration of maritime containers at ports to justify trainload working between container ports and the main industrial centres of the UK. Where concentration was not sufficient throughout transport by road would be used.
Despite the trend towards palletization and containerization the majority of cargo still arrived at ports in non-unitized form, said Mr. N. N. B. Ordman, director of planning and management services, Port of London Authority. The average export passing through the Port of London was of about 2; tons.
Comparing palletization with containerization, Mr. Ordman said the costs of the two systems showed up the advantages of each in relation to particular traffics, route length and commodity. In general, the pallet system scored in flexibility, the container in security and transfer costs.
Despite fears that capacity of roads leading to ports would be insufficient to cope with the expected large flows of containers, Mr. Ordman said the London Traffic Survey showed that in the corridor leading to the London conurbation which was most heavily used by dock traffic, that traffic amounted to just over 1 per cent of the total, so that if the general road system in such areas was adequate for normal industrial, commercial and amenity use it would be adequate for port traffic. Of course, said the speaker, this did not detract from the urgency, from the point of view of the ports, of a first-class system of roads in the UK generally.
Even though container terminal throughputs of the order of 1m. tons a year were envisaged, Mr. Ordman believed that container traffic would be less "peaky" than that serving conventional cargo berths. As road capacity must be designed for peaks the advent of highly developed container terminals would not place demands on roads which were proportional to the increase in throughput which they will achieve.
The speaker stressed that the container system demanded communications systems faster, more efficient and more directly related to transport reeds than have been previously used. Computers, telex, radio and telephones had been available for years but a great deal of development was still needed in the establishment of integrated data transmission and processing systems specifically suited to container operations.
In his paper dealing with airport freight integration Mr. N. J. Payne, director of engineering, British Airports Authority, traced the growth in the capacity of air cargo carry
ing aircraft from the 7; tons of the Douglas DC4 to 50 tons in the latest versions of the DC8 and Boeing 707. "The B747 will raise this figure to approaching 100 tons and the Lockheed L500 to as many as 165 tons" said Mr. Payne.
Each doubling of aircraft capacity had reduced direct operating costs by 20-25 per cent per capacity ton mile. Corresponding reductions in ground and indirect costs were giving a clear impetus to traffic growth; shorter hauls were becoming profitable and over the longer distances there was talk in the United States of "less than highway trucking costs".
Mr. Payne suggested that new cargo aircraft would be more economic if cargo densities of around 12 lb /cuft (including weight and volume of packing) applied, as opposed to the current figure of 8.9 lb lcu.ft. under the Warsaw Convention. By comparison, typical highway merchandise density was around 20Ib/cu.ft with international sea transport exceeding 50 lb icu.ft.
The likely developments in the air freighting of containers to ISO dimensional standards was discussed. There was a need for air containers weighing around 11 lb /cu.ft of gross volume rather than the 24 lb more typical of existing design, said the speaker. Such containers might well be suited to transport by road and rail with specialized transport equipment but without the need for stacking; the loss of full compatibility might be acceptable because the air containers would probably be owned by air lines and consolidators.