Briton calls for standard ton-mile
Page 6
If you've noticed an error in this article please click here to report it so we can fix it.
by CM reporter, Madrid THE establishment of standard mileages as a basis for tonmileage calculations has been called for by Professor Brian Bayliss, of Bath University, at a symposium organised here by the European Conference of Ministers of Transport.
Prof Bayliss made his plea in a paper on "Raw material resources and transport" which he presented to the conference. He claimed that unless such standard distances were laid down, comparisons of ton mileage between modes, between carriers or even by the same modes for different periods, could be invalid.
He took the following simple example to make his point. In the case illustrated in the diagram at the foot of this page, two identical 1-ton consignments are carried by road from A—one to B arid the other to C. Given no return load, the haulier carries both consignments to B (a total of 6 ton-miles), unloads one consignment and continues to C (a further 3 ton-miles). The vehicle then returns empty, having completed 9 ton-miles. Had this operation been carried out by two hauliers (one going from A to B and one from A to C) then only 6 ton-mile would have been performed.
In the one instance th carriage of the consignment t+ C counts as 6 ton-miles and the other instance 3 ton-mile: yet clearly the output i identical in both instance: given similar quality of servic€ If the most direct practicabl route were taken as the " stan dard distance "—as propose by Prof Bayliss, the two-con signment journey would be ton-miles.
He pointed out in his pape that in road v rail examples much greater discrepancie could arise. A ton sent by row between two points and al identical consignment sent be tween the same points by rail but having to take a mud more roundabout route, woull provide identical transpor "output's," yet the railway ton mile statistic would be impres sively greater.
If instructions for sundrie had been followed exactly b: a British Rail dispatching cled in the 1950s, then a small con signment dispatched fron Ledbury to Colwall—a distano of 8 miles by road—could hay+ entailed a rail journey o several hundred miles.