Operators May Help With Research
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FROM OUR POLITICAL CORRESPONDENT
TRANSPORT operators are likely soon I to get an invitation from the Ministry to assist in some of the research needed to set transport investment on the right course for 1980.
Following the Hall Report (The Commercial Motor, last week) it has been accepted that many of the whys and wherefores of transport need more study.
For instance, the setting up of a factory creates commuters and lorry journeys Yet it is thought that this problem is not sufficiently considered against the light of the local transport problem or the cost of getting the factory m:xed up in congestion.
The Hall Report, which examined trends in transport for the next .20 years, declared bluntly: " At present little is known about the costs of transport operators: But they are very relevant to any consideration of how transport demands can be coped with, while making the least call on economic resources."
Operators will be assured there is to be no element of Government snooping in this field, The Common Market countries are already aware of the value of such commercial studies and, if the coming expansion in road services is to be planned properly, the Government must decide how to base its investment between road and rail.
Another field which is to receive intensive study is the cost to everyone concerned of congestion in cities. Congestion, it is now accepted, not only inflicts loss on an individual involved in it. By his very presence this individual is also inflicting disproportionate costs upon others around him.
Some mildly alarming proposals have been put forward to counteract this. They include the payment of fees for moving through congested areas and the piohibition of certain traffic from certain places at certain times. This is mainly, at the moment, being thought of as a deterrent to private cars.
The Minister of Transport is considering the Hall Report and the suggestions it makes. The report is not, however, a statement of Government policy as such, but only one of several important bases on which transport policy will have to be decided and presented.