PRODUCTIVITY BY NUMBERS
Page 62
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ONLY two passengers were killed in train accidents in 1965, according to the annual report of the chief inspecting officer of railways. Already there have been comparisons very much to the disadvantage of the road user between this very low figure, equivalent to one death in 690m. passenger journeys and the total of more than 7,000 road accidents. The exercise provides yet another example of the difficulty of finding any secure and generally agreed basis for a comparison between road and rail.
Even on this issue where the railways at first sight appear to have an unassailable superiority there are people prepared to support the opposite point of view. The Railway Conversion League has gone so far as to state that the available statistics "correctly interpreted, would almost justify the investigation of railway conversion as a safety measure alone".
Statistics . .
The League claims that the statistics are compiled under rules that tend to be favourable to the railways and unfavourable to the roads; and that there are many other people killed besides passengers. In 1965, for example, there were 61 deaths among staff on the track.
Another contention by the League is that no comparison is valid between a system of transport which has the track to itself and the roads which are freely available to pedestrians and cyclists as well as every category of motor vehicle. A more appropriate basis of comparison might be with the motorways where the accident rate, says the League, is about one-third of that on ordinary highways.
Whether this is true or not it remains unlikely that any attempt to correlate the accident figures for road and rail would have value. The problem of road safety is sufficiently complicated in itself. Many factors may make their contribution to a single accident. The aim of the authorities is to eliminate these factors or minimize them as far as possible. Some of the factors are common to both forms of transport. The railways are fortunately spared many of the others, such as the lack of segregation of traffic on ordinary roads and the presence among road users of the accident-prone driver and the psychopath.
In spite of the lack of success in this type of comparison in the past the temptation to indulge in it remains strong. The most recent exponent is Mr. Geoffrey Wilson, assistant general manager, British Railways, Scottish Region. In a lecture at Glasgow University he chose to finish an excellent exposition on transport (and chiefly railway) economics with a kind of mathematical proof that the railways have a sound long-term future. The two basic reasons were their "space productivity" and their "labour productivity". To make sense both concepts demanded a point of comparison and not unnaturally Mr. Wilson chose road transport for this purpose.
With the help of a few calculations, Mr. Wilson established that the capacity ton mileage per square yard of motorway is 2 ton miles per day. The corresponding figure for a 4-track railway is apparently 6.7 ton miles per day. On the passenger side the capacity in seats per hour per foot width is 150 for cars on an urban motorway, 300 for buses with the exclusive use of a single lane and 2,240 for a suburban railway.
On the basis of these figures, Mr. Wilson's conclusion cannot be faulted. "For freight movement on major trunk routes railways have a substantial advantage", he said. "For high density passenger movement in conurbations the balance in favour of rail is massive." Whatever the truth of this exercise not many other experts would appear to agree with Mr. Wilson in thinking it significant. Obstinate in their error, traders and manufacturers persist in sending their traffic along the lower-capacity route, the hypothetical railway passenger continues to use his car and even the Government makes the mistake of building more motorways where it should be building more railways.
Commuter traffic
The statistics apply only in circumstances where the public wish to use a transport service to its capacity. Commuter traffic in large towns provides the obvious example. In such a case Mr. Wilson is fighting a battle already won. Everybody agrees that the railway commuter services ought to continue.
When it comes to labour productivity, Mr. Wilson finds that comparative figures are more difficult to obtain. It does not occur to him to ask whether there is a good reason for this. He restricts himself to a comparison between the railways and the Transport Holding Co. What emerges from his analysis is predictable. He takes for his purpose the year 1963 when the THC carried 500 tons of traffic for each of the 34,300 men employed. The railways, with 210,000 men directly concerned with freight movement and terminals, carried 1,120 tons per man. When the calculations• were made in terms of net ton miles the difference was even greater. By rail 75,000 ton miles were covered per man; by road only 25,500. The railways' advantage on the passenger side was much less pronounced. Its 635,000 seat miles per man employed was one-third greater than the figure of 480,000 for the road passenger transport companies of the THC.
Discrepancy
The discrepancy between the goods and passenger results should have given a warning to Mr. Wilson. It is an illusion to suppose that he is comparing like with like. It is just 'barely plausible where passengers are concerned, but even in this case an unmanageable number of additional factors would have to be taken into consideration, such as the frequency with which vehicles stop to pick up and set down passengers and the extent of congestion.
That the comparison should even be attempted with goods transport is aston ishing. Mr. Wilson begins with the figure of 234.9m. tons of traffic carried by the railways in 1963. He overlooks the fact that 151m. tons of this traffic consisted of coal and coke and a further 39m, tons of iron and steel. How much coal and coke the THC carries in a year is not recorded and one may assume it to be negligible. Obviously, however, the tipping vehicle operator who carries coal, just like the railways, ought to register a substantial advantage in, tons carried per man employed over, for example, the parcels group of the THC.
When the railways find a basis for comparison which seems favourable to them they do their best to take advantage of it.
The controversy on track costs—which promises to be brought to some kind of conclusion in spite of the slight distaste for the subject to be detected between the lines of the Government's White Paper shows that railway persistence can achieve some kind of success. The latest attack should not therefore be treated too lightly by road operators.