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Relic of the Past

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18th March 1955

Page 189

Page 189, 18th March 1955 — Relic of the Past

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-10MPETITION has become thoroughly respectable even in the Ivory Tower. Rarely these days do --'members and officials of the British Transport mtnission who are called upon to make a speech or ite a thesis fail to work in somewhere a statement to ; effect that competition in transport is healthy and iuld be encouraged within reason. There still remains ioubt whether they really mean what they say, or ether they have properly understood the circumstances Lt make their new-found belief plausible.

[he latest to express his opinion is Maj.-Gen. G. N. ;ssell. chairman of the board of management or British iad Services. He had some reservations about the ;irability of complete freedom. For long-distance alage, he said, there was a great need for a national ;anized service, which might be publicly or privately med. The undertaking should be comprehensive. but t a monopoly. Independent carriers would be allowed provide the spur of competition, and public carriers a whole would face the challenge of the C-licence [der.

Dn this last point Maj.-Gen. Russell hesitated, but ally came down on the side of freedom for the trader. e public carrier, he decided, would have to provide better service than the user could provide himself. tj-Gen. Russell suggested that there were limits to liberties the C-licence holder should be permitted take, and one may supply the additional assumption a neither the trader nor the haulier in the last resort suld be allowed to damage the fabric or the national ;an ization.

Exalted Plane

■ Ilaj.-Gen. Russell was advocating a closed system. He an on a somewhat exalted plane by referring to an !al, and noted the danger of being hypnotized by a leprint. " If an independent operator can give a better vice we should so arrange things that he is able to so.It became clear later, however, by what some 3ple would regard as a suspicious coincidence, that the al resembled very closely the present state of affairs. rticularly so far as B.R.S. are concerned.

[here were hints that developments outside the system ght have to be held in cheek. The country "could t afford-" to have transport facilities in excess of nand, Even without such clues as this it is easy to ess how Maj.-Gen. Russell would react to the introetion of drastic changes in his ideal. His plan for id haulage envisaged one triton and a certain number minnows. He hardly needed to say how strong would his disapproval of the growth of a second or third tional organization competing with B.R.S. all over country. Unfortunately, a system needs protection, 3 that in turn involves the restriction of competition. ij.-Gen. Russell's reservations and hesitations about oliers and C-licence holders showed that at the back his mind he reluctantly recognized this unpalatable :t.

He was addressing the Midland section of the Institute Transport in Birmingham, and only one day later rd Hurcomb. the first incumbent of the Ivory Tower. s giving the House of Lords his own opinion about upetition in transport. "I cannot persuade myself." said. 'that intensified competition between the two main branches of transport. one of which, the railways, is publicly owned, with public obligations that it can never escape. and the other privately owned and operating under the powerful shelter of a restrictive licensing system, will solve the etbstinate transport problem. That problem is not to he so easily conjured away."

Lord Hurcomb and Maj.-Gen. Russell appear to be on opposite sides of the fence in their views on competition, but they are both imprisoned in the same system of thought. The Government's plan for simultaneously spending a good deal of money—or at any rate more money than has been customary—on the roads and the railways does not meet with the approval of Lord Hurcomb. Maj.-Gen. Russell's attitude is more ambiguous. At one point he advocates substantial expenditure on new and better roads, but elsewhere says that the country should not sink more capital in its transport system than is necessary to produce adequate facilities.

Classical Paradox

Perhaps Lord Ilurcornb sees the situation a little more clearly than Maj.-Gen. Russell. Within the closed system that they both advocate competition creates only difficulties. What they both fail to see is that the closed system may be as absurd and out of touch with reality as the classical terradox designed to prove that Achilles would nevercatch the tortoise although he was 10 times as fleet of foot.

Too often the argument against competition starts from the assumption that the amount of traffic available does not vary from year to year. If this were true, the professional carriers would indeed be in a bad way, and could be saved from extinction only by an annual decimation of the ranks of the C-licence holders. The inconsiderate habit formed by trade and industry of producing and dispatching more and more goods each year means not only that there continues to be enough traffic to go round but also that the roads, and to a lesser., extent the railways, are becoming progressively less capable of meeting the ever-growing demands made upon them, Improvements may be suggested in the Government's present plans. Speaking just before Lord Hurcomb in the House of Lords debate, Lord Lucas asked how the ratio had been decided of il.200moo be spent on the railways and £147m. on roads. " If traffic trends arc maintained as at present," he added, " the roads projected by the Minister of Transport will be over-trafficked even before they are completed."

The fact remains that an expansion of transport generally is needed for the carriage of the extra goods that the Government bone to see produced. Competition in transport, by promoting efficiency and economy, will help to stimulate production still further. It would be absurd even to consider new restrictions. The rapid increase in the number of C-licensed vehicles in recent years has not been matched by a drop in the tonnage carried by rail, and, although B.R.S. have carried a little less each year. hauliers have almost certainly carried appreciably more, If any protection is needed, it is for competition rather than for the closed system, which is as much a relic of the past as integration.