letters
Page 42
If you've noticed an error in this article please click here to report it so we can fix it.
We welcome letters for publication on transport topics. Address them to Commercial Motor, 40 Bowling Green Lane, London, Ed.
Sir Richard Way
• Why does a lifetime Civil Servant who has moved to a top job with a flourishing industrial company (Lansing GagneII, of which he was chairman) choose to accept the bed of nails which chairmanship of London Transport seems fated to be? The challenge of a big task in the public service sector was the real draw, said Sir Richard Way, chairman of London Transport Executive, when I interviewed him last week. But he admitted to taking several months to accept Richard Marsh's offer of the post.
His relationships with GLC are friendly, he says, and there has been no annoying meddling: though these are early days. Sir Richard believes that all parties now accept the need for public transport subsidies, but he insists that these should be specific and identifiable, and he prefers grants for capital purposes rather than operational subsidies. He cannot see how public transport could remain manageable and efficient if it became the truly free social service which some advocate.
Sir Richard sees his biggest single management problem as staff relations. His creed is maximum consultation, and he has already introduced advanced consultation with the Central Bus Committee on schedule changes. His warm personality and twinkling humour suggest a man with special talents in the human relations field.
Sir Richard first entered the portals of 55 Broadway long before becoming chairman; he went there one dark day in 1940 as an executive officer in the contracts department of the War Office, negotiating for the hire of buses to replace vehicles lost at Dunkirk.
But as a Londoner born and bred he was familiar with London Transport services and vehicles from his earliest days. His schooldays ambition was to teach, and he obtained a London University scholarship: but simultaneously he sat and passed the Civil Service executive exarnination—a rich choice of careers in those depressed days of 1933. He chose the Civil Service and spent his next 24 years at home and abroad with the War Office. Senior posts in the Supply. Defence and Aviation Ministries followed: his last three years were as Permanent Secretary at the latter.
Sir Richard is on the board of BOAC and is a member of the machine-tool Little Neddy. He is also a member of the MCC and a cricket, soccer, athletics and rugby enthusiast. An accomplished pianist, he is a lover of classical music, but retains a great admiration for the Duke Ellington style of jazz. A choice of relaxations if that bed of nails begins to bitel B.C.
Maintenance forms
Referring to the report of my company's recent application to the N.W. deputy Licensing Authority (CM April 10): my apologies if the impression was given that the RTITB Training Assistance in Small Companies department had provided the forms and advice on maintenance systems. This was not so. The forms provided by TASC were designed to record in some detail the cost of the aspects of our operations including maintenance costs. The company has devised its own maintenance recording system without TASC's assistance and it was this to which the vehicle examiner at Lancaster made reference.
In fact, TASC advice has been most valuable to us in establishing a comprehensive costing and recording system (of which maintenance recording is but a part) for our operations. We are now in the middle of our first three months of running their systems and they are working satisfactorily. We look forward to their future advice based on this collection of information to improve the operations of our company.
I. D. HOLLAND, Director, Effluents Services Ltd, Stockport
Railways into roads
I was pleased to see in your leading article in a recent issue of CM that Britain will after all have 1,000 miles of motorway in use by the early 1970s, but unfortunately the early 1970s look like being a very lean time for letting contracts for building furthermotorways.
It would seem that progress is going to be very half-hearted in building Britain's second generation of motorways, and these are badly needed as we shall have over 30 million vehicles in use by the turn of the century.
The one way we could keep up and greatly expand the rate of road construction is by converting railways into roads.
The Midland and Great Central Railways could be converted into motorways to carry M1 traffic into St. Pancras and Marylebone and when the M6 is connected with the M1 at Catthorpe both the Midland and Great Central could provide the routes for alternative motorways to the North and Midlands, which would relieve the ever-growing pressure on the southern section of the Ml. There are, of course, so many areas of Britain where railway conversion could provide excellent motorways and one that looks very promising is the old Southern Railway from Basingstoke via Salisbury. Yeovil and Exeter to Plymouth. This would seem to be the logical way of extending the M3. London-Basingstoke motorway to Plymouth, which has a population of over 200,000 and should be on the Motorway Map.
This railway is joined at Yeovil by the Great Western Line from Weymouth to Castle Cary. This connects with the Taunton to Reading railway which could link the M4 at Reading with the M5, which will eventually be extended to Exeter.
Other lines, such as the route from Settle via Carlisle and Melrose to Edinburgh, would be a great blessing to road traffic and would relieve the railways of a great liability.
We could have all these excellent roads and many more at bargain prices if only the Government would take an intelligent interest in railway conversion.
A. I. WATKINSON, Harrogate,
Road tests
I should be pleased to hear from any of your readers who has for disposal any volumes of the Commercial Motor Road Tests prior to 1968.
PETER BIRSON, "Cranboume", Claremont Road, St. Saviour, Jersey, Channel Islands. (What Mr Birson presumably would particularly like are the CM Road Tests, first series September 1962, second September 1963, now out of print. Ed.)
Grants cut
With reference to the story "Grants cut: block rebates proposed" (CM March 6). I would like to ask—who does the RTITB think it is fooling ? It seems to me to be thwarting the main reason for its existence which is "to keep the flow of trained fitters, craftsmen, etc. going in order to keep the industry in good fettle-.
The RTITB appears to be going to give greater grants still to the few graduates who are now loaded with grants, and in so doing will deprive the vehicle trade in general of both craftsmen and managers. This will happen because the so-called graduate managers, having received their training, will put it to good use in the more lucrative employment of huge companies selling goods, not service.
All this is because the RTITB is trying to make up for a loss that it should acknowledge _and recoup by honest methods, not by the way proposed and as revealed in the CM report.
J. F. MACDONALD, Bordon, Hants.
True or false?
Recently Sir Reginald Wilson stated that the National Freight Corporation was not a nationalized body.
1. If this is true, is the NFC now a private enterprise company?
2. If it is not true, is this a case for reference under the Trade Descriptions Act?
H. BRADSHAW, J. Bradshaw and Sons Ltd., Lincoln.