Transport Man
Page 52
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A crowd flowed over London Bridge, so ntany, I had not thought death had undone so many.
0 CCUPYING an honoured niche somewhere in the Ivory Tower should be an effigy of Transport Man. He is latest in succession of a long line that begins with prehistoric man and includes economic man, political man, the common man and very likely the man in the iron mask. Everybody knows all about him, but nobody has ever met him. Transport Man comes into existence wherever people rely upon somebody else to carry them or their goods from place to place.
His most inveterate manifestation is to be found among the inhabitants of a large town. The countryman is not so obviously a slave to public transport. More often than not he walks or cycles pleasantly to and from his work and the occasional journey to the nearest town is a joyride rather than a drudgery. The towndweller is like the victim of some gigantic confidence trick. Lured by the ubiquitous bus and train, he has moved his home farther and farther away from his place of work. Houses have been strung out alongside main roads and clustered round stations. Transport Man has by degrees become dependent on a traffic time-table. If it be disorganized,. the whole pattern of his life is changed.
No wonder he appears so miserable a creature to the impartial observer. Myopic, round-shouldered, inclined to shy if a rabbit crosses his path, Transport Man shivers patiently and obediently in the queue at the bus-stop, and shuffles dutifully in an attempt to pass right along there, please! when already jammed to the point of suffocation. He is the victim of the transport age. a dreadful warning of the effects of civilization.
What makes the future look so black for him is the tendency for all the public transport services to coalesce. They are ganging up on Transport Man and he has no satisfactory means for uniting with others in the same position as himself in order to resist. Not that the British Transport Commission, archetype of the trans port combine, is deliberately malevolent. It does its limited best to help him, and goes out of its way to clear up the mess for which it plainly holds him responsible. Transport Man's grouse (if he dared to voice it) is that the B.T.C. claims to know so much better than he does what is good for him.
Unexpected Exactness Transport Mon in Glasgow has just been given an inkling of what is in store for him. In theory the report of the committee on passenger transport in Glasgow and
district has much to commend it. It deprecates the waste involved in having three more or less unrelated agencies to serve the area. The committee recommends that the corporation should concentrate its activities mainly within the city boundary and that outside that limit the Scottish Omnibuses group should take over. Electrification of the railways in the Clyde valley, at a cost pin-pointed with unexpected exactness as £10,236,540, would draw a large number of passengers from the roads, thus reducing the services required from the Scottish Omnibuses group.
All that Transport Mon has to provide is his co-operation. He must give up his preference for road and go back to rail. If the committee has its way, the act of D12
renunciation will be symbolized and commemorated each time he makes a journey towards the centre of the city. He will have to leave his bus when it reaches one of a number of exchange points and line up for a train to cover the rest of the journey. As a concession, a streamlined fares schedule will be devised to give him complete interavailability between road and rail
The Scottish branch of the transport clan seems to be not always co-operative. The Inglis report states that a scheme for inter-services between bus and rail began in March for the benefit of the Pollok housing estate. It is now to be withdrawn, mainly because of the lack of public support. Apparently the benighted denizens of Pollok prefer to travel into Glasgow by any method other than to take the bus to Corkerhill station and change.
Puzzling Ceremony In London, Transport Man is at present taking part in a ceremony that is likely to puzzle his descendants a generation hence when they have become completely resigned to the idea of travelling as something that is done to them rather than as something they do. The Transport Tribunal is investigating an application by the B.T.C. to increase passenger fares and a good deal of the evidence so far has been concerned with the effect on the services operated by London Transport.
On a superficial reading of the reports of the inquiry, the B.T.C. appears to be taking a fearful beating at the hands of the representatives of Transport Man. A strong case has been built up by way of examples of what will happen to typical Londoners when their fares increase. Mr. Julius Jacobs, secretary of the London Trades Council, cited Mr. "G," a hospital porter living at Rayleigh in Essex, who travelled 50 miles each way to work. He earned £5 18s. a week, and spent an average of 1 4s. 9d. a week for himself and an addi tional 10s. on family fares. Mr. Jacobs said that the threatened increase would probably lead to the resignation of Mr. " G " from his work.
The Transport Tribunal must be concerned to hear of such cases, but whether it can help is another matter. Its main task is to decide what proportion London Transport and the railway passenger services should bear of the extra money required to make the B.T.C. pay its way. The Tribunal may also determine the most equitable method of .raising the money. Its natural sympathy for Mr. " G " does not entitle it to propose a subsidy as the solution. It has no power to solve the problem of the passenger who can no longer afford the fare to and from work.
The B.T.C., for its part, has a little cold-bloodedly allowed in its estimates for some loss of travel. With a burden of £40m. to discharge somehow upon the public, it cannot do much for the individual who is suffering hardship. It can calculate with fair accuracy how much revenue will accrue from any particular increase in charges, and the effective part of the inquiry largely resolves itself into a wrangle over the individual items making up the total.
The inquiry, which has now run for nearly two months, gives Transport Man the opportunity to air his opinions in return for putting up the money. With the best will in the world on the part of the Tribunal, the inquiry for much of the time is an empty ceremony. The decision is largely made by force of circumstances.