FIVE-TON TAX: £120 PER ANNUM?
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No Opportunity Must Be Lost, "The Inspector " Urges, in Emphasizing the National Incidence of Highway Costs, if Ridiculous Suggestions for Increased Taxation are to be Scotched.
OF ALL the controversial subjects I have carefully chosen during very many weeks and upon which I have been allowed to unburden my cocksure opinions on to the readers of The Commercial Motor, I cannot recall having ventured to offer my views on the great question of the roads and their many problems It may be that, until recently, I have felt that there could not be sufficiently opposing views on the matter, but so considerable an interest is now being evinced in the subject in the ordinary public Press that I can no longer avoid the endeavour to find some point of view which may provoke the criticism upon which I thrive!
Of esaa-d construction proper, I know very little enorealsan enabled me, some years ago, to join issue with that widely experienced authority, Colonel Crompton, in awritten discussion on the cause of road waves, and the possibility of their -avoidance. I ventured to suggest, as a result of not a little practical experience with 13arford and Perkins's excellent petrol-engined rollers, that, if during road construction operations it could be arranged that the preliminary consolidations of foundation and surface were effected by rolling at right angles to the road, the subsequent detrimental displacement of road material in the nominal direction of the thoroughfare would not take place. I never saw that suggestion ehallenged, and, presumably, it was not found practicable to test the theory owing to the mechanical difficulties involved. Nevertheless, in common with most other road liters with a smattering of common sense, I knew enough to be sure that many repair methods practised by local authorities, preeutetably. on the more of economy, are worse than usele i es n modern conditions, and, in the end, must arid do result in increased expenditure. Some, at least, of the new increases in road costs are traceable to such causes.
It is. not necessary to attempt. to discuss maintenance methods from a technical standpoint, even if one were competent to do so, in order to reach the conviction that a very serious problem has to be faced in the Homeland as to who is to pay for the upkeep of modern highways under present-day traffic. It at once occurs. to the writer to inquire as to the method of dealing with this great question in other countries than our own, and particularly in America, France and Germany, where road transport has developed disproportionately to the rest of the world. In Cambodia and Ind o China, Lord Northcliffe tells us of many miles of superbly surfaced and graded *roadways already carrying their complement of motor traffic, and in the Malay Peninsula the Federated Malay States Railways have for many years maintained highly efficient public motor services on magnificent highways. It may be that the problem of road costs is a iar more difficult one in England than anywhere else in the world. Were it not so, we should surely not read in the seriously minded columns of -contemporary publications definite suggestions that if the money for maintenance is to be found commercial motor vehicIos. should, in equity, be called on to pay taxation on the basis of 300 per -cent, above present rates!
Road maintenance costs in 1921 rose in this country to a figure in excess of 250,000,000—nearly three times what it was in the years immediately preceding the war—and there are not wanting very serious signs—in Westmorland and Cumberland for example—that the local ratepayer, gasping already under excessively burdensome expenses of a more local nature, is no longer prepared to foot any substantial proportion of this huge sum. And it is very easy to foresee that he will greedily swallow the suggestion that is being widely made by surveyors and County and other authorities that the alarming increase must be laid entirely at the door of the motor vehicle owner. He it is who uses the roads; let him pay for them.
May I suggest the desirability of emphasizing from now onwards what should be a self-evident fact? We should insist on the point of view that modern transport to-day is "everybody's pigeon." That road facilities of the finest are, beyond all doubt, of national importance in evety sense of the word. They are as vital from the military point of view, as from that of the civilian. Aircraft, again, depend for service on the roads, the ordinary highways and byways and not .on the railroad or the tramway.
It is a national question this provision of highway facilities on modern lines. Our flour, bread, meat, fish, wool, cotton, coal, milk, furniture, drapery, clothes, boots, laundry, newspapers, house refuse, bricks, timber, beer, ice, groceries, toffee, sewage, pianos, and a thousand and one other things are carried for us or brought to us by road, promptly and efficiently—far more promptly and efficiently than they were ever carried behind horses. We citizens littl realize how tremendously we depend upon motor haulage, after these few short years' for better domestic service. We know all about the fireengine, another road user, which has trebled our protection at home and at business, and most of us appreciate the new facilities afforded by the motorbus, to say-nothing of the char-h,-banes. The roads are more important to us than, shall we say, is street lighting or public-recreation grounds, public libraries or advanced public education. We as rate. payers must be content to pay for what we want. The owner of a commercial vehicle has voluntarily assumed a vastly increased charge for his special share of road facilities, and, be it remembered, he also is a ratepayer as well as a vehicle-owner and more often than not a very big one.' Road maintenance is properly a public charge and must be borne nationally, subject to substantial contributions by the largest users.
It is time we took very serious stock of the situation. There is going to be no end of a row before long, when the ratepayer-will be asked for* heavier local contributiont to make good roads -that have never been renovated in the modern sense since the war. And interested parties are already at workl indicating the motor vehicle, and particularly the bus and the lorry, as responsible for the position When we see in cold black and white a serious suggestion that the five-ton lorry should properly be called upon to pay £120 a year for the privilege of using the roads, it is high time for ue all to get busy and remind our fellows that the roads are a, public convenience, a national asset, and should be a national expense.