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Take Your Pick

16th October 1964
Page 39
Page 39, 16th October 1964 — Take Your Pick
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Which of the following most accurately describes the problem?

MANY people including that high priest of quotations, Disraeli —have been prone to remark about "lies, damned lies and statistics ". Now that the subject of track costs is being bandied around freely (last week it was the R.H.A. and T.R.T.A., this week it was Mr. Frank Lemass, the new president of the Institute of Transport), operators might well express their feelings in similar vein.

In common with polls about General Election results, track costs have this feature—given the same set of circumstances different people come up with remarkably varying pictures, all of which are attested to be accurate. It must seem quite beyond comprehension to the man in the street when he reads about it in his daily newspaper; it must seem nearly as bad to the operator who feels he should try to understand it all.

Basically, " track costs" is a very simple phrase, implying apportionment to a vehicle of the true cost of the road it uses. It is not an unreasonable viewpoint that such should be the case. But like so many transport theories, its practicality immediately becomes immersed in a sea of jargon and sectional (also political) interests. It would seem that by far the most sectional of the approaches has been that of Dr. Beeching. Nobody, of course, is surprised at this.

But, equally, nobody should be surprised if track costs become a fairly major political plaything. Certainly depending on the colour of your rosette, you can take your choice of degree. One thing is certain: experts, all over the world, have been arguing about track costs for 30 or 40 years. They arc unlikely, therefore, suddenly to come to a unanimous decision?

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Organisations: Institute of Transport

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