Political Commentary By JANUS
Page 55
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Unanimous in Doing Nothing
TO hear the politicians talk, one would imagine that traffic congestion was like dyspepsia or the plagues of Egypt, compounded in equal parts of human folly and the inexplicable blows of fate. For the present state of affairs the politicians alone are to blame. Regardless of party, they have been unanimous for years in declaiming that something ought to be done to improve the roads, and equally unanimous in doing nothing: Now that the situation is becoming intolerable, they beg for a breathing-space, during which they suggest placing a wide variety of restrictions on road users.
By way of demonstrating how admirably free the subject is from party strife, Mr. Martin Lindsay, a Conservative M.P., set the tone of the recent debate in the House of Commons by giving, as examples of "temporary restrictive measures," increased restrictions on private parking and-upon new entrants into the road haulage industry, compulsory staggered hours of work in the big cities. " and so on." There was much virtue in that "and so on."
Other members filled in the detail with suggestions for taxing the.driver of any car that came into London unnecessarily, for levying tolls on road users, for keeping the width of vehicles within the present limits, and finally for taking from the roads "traffic which has no right to be there."
Discretion Overcome
As the debate went on, enthusiasm got the better of the restrictionists, and there were fewer references to a time limit on their proposals. Even without this hint, one may be sure that it is easier to impose a restriction than to lift it. The Statute Book is full of regulations imposed under the stress of some desperate emergency and then found indispensable.
Legislation to drive traffic off the roads may, if it is severe enough, achieve its object. The legislators will then point out that they have rid the roads of traffic and solved the whole problem without having to spend any of the public's money. If people still complain that they want to use the roads, they can do the other thing.
When it comes to the point, there is no exact agreement on what restrictions-should be placed on what road users. Mr. Lindsay was so bold as to name one restriction "which everyone would welcome immediately." This was upon the carriage of outsize loads, "which should be forced to return to the railways." One or two other speakers echoed this condemnation of the heavy haulier. It was left to Mr. Hugh Molson, Joint Parliamentary Secretary to the Ministry of Transport, to point out that it was impossible to transfer the abnormal indivisible loads to the railways.
Too Large for Rail
"These large loads," said Mr. Molson, "are due in considerable measure to the great strides which British engineering has taken in the last few years. There are great hydro-electric machines which are manufactured in inland towns and have to be transported to the coast. They cannot he put on the railways because they are too large to pass under the railway bridges. So it is that, with 'great difficulty, routes along the roads have to be chosen where there are no bridges too small for the loads to pass under them." As for Mr. Lindsay's suggested ban upon newcomers into road haulage, another view has, been expressed by Sir Reginald Wilson, a member of the British Transport Commission. In his presidential address to the Railway Students' Association, Sir Reginald has picked out the re-emergence of private transport since the war as " the one great factor giving rise to our present congestion." In town the private car and the trader's van, on the arterial road the heavy C-licensed vehicle and to a lesser extent the private car, says Sir Reginald, are taking up too much space in proportion to the goods or passengers they carry.
Wholesale Strangulation
Private transport, he concludes, is rapidly strangling itself and threatens to strangle public transport at the same time. This we have heard before: All roads lead to the end of the world, unless the H-bomb gets there first. In another 50 years, there will not be enough food for the increased population, reserves of coal, oil and tinder-boxes will be exhausted, there will be no more new jokes, and houses will stretch in an unbroken line from Cape Town to Kamkatcha.
Malthus had the commonsense answer. If congestion becomes too great, people will stop using the roads until the position improves. The one or two speakers in the debate who urged unequivocally that the Government should allocate more money for road expenditure were surely in the right. Mr. Molson went no further than his predecessors in saying that the Government accepted "the general principle that it is necessary for there to be a large programme of road development as and when it is possible for us to finance it."
There are broad hints, however, that the Government have a mind to release considerably more money than the extra 150m. promised by Mr. Lennox-Boyd last December. It seems a pity to disturb this frame of mind by suggesting that restrictions can clean up the traffic problem just as easily.
Stand Together
Road users must not fall into the trap of abusing each other. The private motorist held up behind a bulky load on a slow-moving transporter is tempted to wish all such consignments out of the road and to protest against proposals to increase the permitted widths of commercial vehicles. The haulier with a load to deliver in Central London has harsh things to say about the serried ranks of parked cars. The abuse should be for the inadequate road system rather than forthe other driver, whether present with a too-obtrusive load or absent from a car that blocks the way to the kerb.
Politics also should be kept out of the controversy. The need for better roads unites all M.P.s and has nothing to do with denationalization. One or two attempts were made to drag the subject into the recent debate. Mr. James Hudson deplored the Government's policy of setting the people free" to use road transport pretty much as they like. He went on to say that "either there must be a considerable extension of the road servicing and building programme or there must be a very great curtailment of the right of the people to use the roads," so that it was not easy to tell whose side he was on. The need for better roads, in fact, transcends the problem of who shall own the vehicles.