Transportivity
Page 49
If you've noticed an error in this article please click here to report it so we can fix it.
Government Attempts to Strike an Artificial Balance Between Road and Rail Defeat Their Own Object by Increasing Road Transport Costs as well as Railway Charges
FORESUMABLY, an American first coined the word "productivity." It has been eagerly adopted by planners and economists in this country, who like I have their own technical vocabulary of terms less kely to cause offence than other better-known cpressions. Tell a man he is lazy or inefficient, and au have made an enemy. Tell him that his producvity ratio is low, and he will feel that at last he has iet somebody who understands him.
The Economic Survey for 1951 even provides a ormula by which productivity may be worked out to ny number of places of decimals. The output and the umber of workers in the principal industries—manuacturing, mining, building and public utilities—are hown for the past four years as percentages of the gures for 1946. The 1947, 1948, 1949 and 1950 output ercentages are given as 108, 121, 129 and 140, those or employment being 108, 111, 112 and 115. On the ■ asis of these statistics, the Chancellor of the Exchequer afers that "very roughly speaking" productivity has ocreased by an average of 7 per cent. a year during he past three years.
A Present for Lexicographers
Even when one speaks very roughly, it is nappropriate to discuss productivity in connection with ransport. The transport operator, it is true, is supposed o produce the goods at the end of the journey, but not n the same way as a manufacturer produces a car at he end, of an assembly line. If it be necessary to use i special word to describe the transport equivalent of naking two blades of grass grow where only one grew oefore, I make the lexicographers a present of ' transportivity " before the Americans beat me to it.
Transport providers should benefit twice over from he rise in productivity. The more goods produced, the greater the tonnage to be carried. At the same time, if transport be pulling its weight in the national economy, Its own efficiency should be improving to at least the iame extent as that of industry as a whole. The upward :urve of productivity should be balanced by an :quivalent curve for transportivity.
Nationalized Transport's Contribution
To show whether or not this is happening, statistics are required which are certainly not available for A-, Band C-licence holders. The Ivory Tower publishes fairly detailed four-weekly reports on its own activities, and these may provide some indication of the contribution which nationalized transport is making. The following comparison is based on the figures given for the 'four weeks ended February 26, 1950, and February 25, 1951.
Railway freight trains carried 22,563,000 tons in the earlier period and 22,772,000 tons in the later. The Road Haulage Executive's comparable figures were 3,539,000 tons and 3,578,000 tons. R.H.E. staff numbered 69,264 at February 26 last year, and 76,017 at the same date this year.
Neither Executive shows any great increase in the
volume of traffic carried. An estimate of the transportivity of British Railways is obscured by the lack of a clear-cut distinction between the staffs on the goods and the passenger side. The total railway staff between the two four-weekly periods, however, fell from 621,323 to 599,715, which would argue at least some increase in transportivity during the 12 months. Transportivity on the road haulage side appears actually to have declined by something like 8 per cent.
Mr. Cecil Poole, M.P., and other people of his kidney would be tempted at this point to blame the C-licence holder for filching the fruits of transportivity. The analysis made some weeks ago by the Ministry of Transport shows that the C-licence fleet increased from 672,301 to 733,044 during 1950, or by 8.3 per cent., about the same as the increase in industrial output given by the Chancellor. In other words, the number of C-licensed vehicles is groWing at the rate one would expect. As the tonnage carried is not known, it is impossible to estimate their transportivity, just as it is with road haulage vehicles, the number of which slightly declined in 1950 because of acquisitions.
Artificial Balance Useless
The lesson for the Chancellor or for his successors seems reasonably clear. Meddling by the Government in an attempt to strike an artificial balance between road and rail meets with little success, and indeed defeats its own object in that charges for road transport go up as well as charges on the railways. Increasing the fuel tax and restricting the haulier have no beneficial effect on nationalized transportivity and place an irritating brake upon the efficiency of free enterprise.
It should scarcely be necessary to remind the Government of the increase in transportivity to be gained by raising the speed limit for heavy goods vehicles. A less pleasing reminder is of the hung, drawn and quartered • Transport (Amendment) Bill, the supporters of which might well in their publicity have linked transportivity with justice and fair play for free-enterprise hauliers. As it is, the effects of the Transport Act are still spreading, with a consequent waste of time and effort. Transportivity does not thrive where there are illogical restrictions and competition on unfair and unequal terms.