BARBARA'S SAND CASTLE
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EHICLES bringing goods into Britain from abroad after the Transport Bill is passed will presumably not be subject to a railway inquisition if they have to travel more than 100 miles or happen to be carrying one of the still unspecified bulk traffics. It is hard to see how the railways could establish any sort of a case in respect of a vehicle already loaded and merely awaiting permission to proceed. More important still would be the risk of similar restrictions on British vehicles going to other countries.
In these circumstances it is difficult to understand why the Bill does not include a simple clause giving immunity to foreign vehicles. The nearest approach to the subject is in Section 86(4)(a) which will give the Minister of Transport power to make additional regulations to cover "vehicles brought temporarily into Great Britain".
The Minister may prefer this oblique strategy for more than one reason. She may wish to retain the option to distinguish between the treatment of operators from countries with which satisfactory bilateral agreements have been made and, for example, of Spanish operators whose Government for political or other reasons appears to be making things as awkward as possible for international traffic coming from Britain.
Chain reaction
Alternatively the Minister may be apprehensive that the favoured treatment of foreigners which is almost forced upon her may set up a chain reaction with consequences it is impossible to calculate.
Those sections dealing with special authorizations or quantity licensing are one of the main targets for the opponents of the Bill and are perhaps its most vulnerable point. The proposed structure is a sand castle rather than solid rock and will be particularly susceptible to erosion.
The process may already have begun. According to reports, the Prime Minister has told the Confederation of British Industry that the Bill will be amended to allow consumers as well as operators to make a case for using road transport rather than rail.
The concession can only accentuate the absurdity of the procedure before the Licensing Authority when, if the Bill becomes law, the railways or the Freightliner company are making one of their attempts to prove that they are as good as the next man. If the customer or user is actually present and expresses his own opinion it would be strange, perhaps inconceivable, for the Licensing Authority to tell him that he is mistaken. The weak spot will be probed during the Committee stage of the Bill and subsequently. Every other device will be used to limit the scope of quantity licensing. It can be attacked from another quarter altogether if there are to be excluded categories of operator such as the man from overseas. Other operators will insist all the more vehemently that there is no respectable reason for treating them differently.
When the foreign operator is not subject to mileage limitations in this country the British operator travelling in the reverse direction must have at least an equal right. This is unlikely to be denied.
In fact Section 86(4Xb) hints at further regulations applying "to the carriage of goods on journeys between places in Great Britain and places outside Great Britain". What this seems to mean is that operators sending traffic by ferry services in their own vehicles or trailers need not worry about quantity licensing. It would also cover the position of foreign operators seeking return loads to Europe.
Other more confusing aspects are likely to present themselves. It might happen that two operators or even the same operator could be taking identical traffic for the same customer for ultimate delivery to the same destination abroad. Permission could in one case be granted because the entire journey would be covered on the same wheels and in the other case refused because the load would be transhipped when it reached the coast.
Not trivial
One can imagine the problem facing the haulier who tried to explain all this to his customer. The special authorization, one is led to believe, is being created to protect the railways against too much competition from road transport over long journeys in this country. The decision whether or not to grant the authorization, it now transpires, depends upon what happens to the traffic after it leaves the country. If it makes sense to the legislators it makes none to the public.
The question of credibility is not trivial. No licensing system will work satisfactorily if it contains too many anomalies or too many characteristics which seem contrary to commonsense.
Mrs. Barbara Castle said something to the same effect in her White Paper on freight transport. In her opinion the present system no longer effectively achieved its original objectives "and the objectives themselves need to be reconsidered in the light of modern needs".
Perhaps the Minister herself has failed to give sufficient consideration to modern needs. Criticism has already been made of points in the Bill which may hold back desirable developments. Vehicle weights, for example, will be kept down, not for sound technical or operational reasons, but in order to escape licensing completely, or to escape quantity licensing, or to avoid payment of the proposed new heavy goods vehicle charge.
Many new problems
Among other examples of the distortion which the Bill is likely to induce in the operating pattern of the road transport industry may be an acceleration in the trend towards the use of roll-on/roll-off services. This in itself may not be a bad thing and the providers of the ferries would certainly not object. It would be more generally acceptable if the trend developed for sound commercial reasons rather than as a reaction to the difficulty of obtaining special authorizations.
Not that the operator who has so far stopped short at the coast should embark too lightly on an international voyage of discovery. He will find many new problems. International hauliers already in the business may well feel, in spite of the vagueness of Section 86(4), that they have made a fortunate choice in so far as the new licensing provisions are concerned. They will not have to bother to prove their superiority to the railways.
Too rapid an increase in international work by hauliers could produce its own difficulties. An upper limit will be placed on the total volume of traffic as a result of the growing number of bilateral agreements. Unless fairly rapid changes can be arranged in the quota of vehicles allowed into each country with which an agreement has been made, hauliers hoping to escape from quantity licensing may be disappointed.
Bus SHOPS, please!
I READ a lot in COMMERCIAL MOTOR about new bus designs— and highly theoretical pieces about public transport and future traffic trends. How nice it would be to see a piece by an expert advocating a system to dispel the drudgery of waiting that passengers have to withstand.
For instance: for town services let's have some thoughts on running buses between bus shops (not just stops—those rainridden, gutter-spattered dreary places that inean passengers would rather travel by any means other than buses, in the first place).
"Conductors" should be placed in the shops and issue tickets for all services stopping at the shops—warm and comfortable places, please, illustrated with wall maps, and having tea-vending machines and so on. The conductor should usher passengers onto buses, beneath a large commissionaire's-type umbrella in rain, thus enabling one-man operation and a financial saving to pay for the shop rents. More inspectors should help drivers to see that passengers don't take an advantage of a 4d ticket to travel on a 2s journey.
In the past conductors used to help some passengers new to routes with information about their destinations. But let's face it, in London at least the age of passenger service vehicle courtesy has passed. So let's at least have efficiency and comfort. When coloured conductors and conductresses were first recruited I found them often more polite—and generally more cheerful!—so I trust at least that I won't falsely be accused of racial prejudice when I state that they are far more likely today to know the latest test cricket score than help a passenger with information as to where a destination is with regard to a bus route.
What a disgrace it is that even in the Euston/St. Pancras/ King's Cross area there is no decent waiting point for bus passengers, but just top-cover-only shelters. London Transport could make a warm bus waiting shop their contribution to the "I'm Backing Britain" movement. After all, many passengers are workers—and arriving at work wet and cold is no help towards industrial efficiency. Move the stops down the road by all means— of course shops can't be found with no trouble at all. But the present shambles is a hangover from the days of horse trams. A. SINGLETON, Chelsea.
[COMMERCIAL MOTOR has just run a series (November 17, 24 and December 1, 8) which takes a hard, practical look at passenger transport.—Ed.1 To testing: 31 days!
WHEN considering vehicle testing, it might be interesting to bear in mind that while a vehicle should, preferably, be tested loaded, it could take about two days to prepare a vehicle for testing (longer if any maintenance is necessary), another day for test, and yet another half-day to load the vehicle.
Does Authority assume that transport operators have customers who (even supposing their goods are convenient to have on vehicles going through testing), would be prepared for their load to be on a lorry, say for at least three to four days, plus actual delivery time, in order that a vehicle can be tested loaded?
It may be usual for the railways to take a week, or longer, to carry out a job, but I doubt if the normal A-licensed operator could get away with it—particularly when very often a load put on at 4 p.m. is expected to be delivered perhaps over a 300-mile journey by the following morning.
If it is assumed, therefore, that loaded A vehicles can legally only load other people's goods, and that this is not likely to be allowed by customers because of the delay, it would seem that most vehicles will have to be tested empty.
A futher point is that, if a vehicle has to go on to a ramp, to be steam-cleaned etc., the dangers involved could be serious.
While the outcome of testing is no doubt sound, the manner in which, as usual, it has been produced is far more complicated and expensive than is necessary. Practically the same results could probably be obtained by increasing the present roadside inspections, plus regular inspections at operators' premises which would automatically have ensured that operators were fitted with equipment to be able to maintain the number of vehicles involved. If they were not, then the onus could be placed upon them to either become so fitted, or to have to cut the number of vehicles.
All the money being spent, on test stations etc., plus the great amount of inconvenience to be caused, will still only amount to the same situation at present appertaining to cars, whereby a vehicle tested today c,an be lethal tomorrow.
In addition, if one multiplies the total time involved by the number of vehicles in any fleet; quite a lot of spare vehicles are likely to be required. And if these are used under a temporary substitution basis the Licensing Authoritie§ will also require more labour to cope, mainly because hauliers cannot afford not to work, and their customers cannot allow their goods to be held up for days while a vehicle is being tested.
Testing, in itself, is a sufficiently large enough proposal to take on, but when to this is added: the proposed weight regulations, hours regulations, tax regulations, new licensing regulations, plus all the uncertainty involved, and the scandalous state of the economy, I believe that the greater majority of operators are simply going to sit and wait to be told when, and if they are in the wrong.
To try to be otherwise, by endeavouring to read and understand all the proposals etc., would drive many insane. It is not worth it when compared to the rewards obtained today, among increasing bias, and taxation.
W. A. G. SAYERS, Newbury, Berks.
Beyond redemption
I READ with interest A. Darley's letter (CM December 8)in which he refers to "muddled thinking" by Mrs. Castle and her "comrades". Mrs. C astle is the mouthpiece of a predominantly Left Wing Cabinet committed beyond redemption to the destruction for all time of individual enterprise and initiative in all its practical forms, road transportation being only one.
Harold Wilson is stealthily working for afait aceompli before the people wake up.
It is only a matter of time before this little Prime Minister will be forced to throw in his hand. Until then we have to suffer in vain . . more restrictions, more taxation, more damage to the business activities of the country by which we all live.
The damage about to be wrought on road transport—one of the nation's lifelines—is nothing short of criminal.
Why should Britain's industries, striving to modernize, be forced to use the outmoded railway system with all its inherent disadvantages, inconvenience and inevitably higher costs, without choice?
LESLIE APPLEBY, .Tnr, Wolverhampton.