Nature of co-ordinating task •

20th September 1968, Page 212

20th September 1968

Page 212

Page 212, 20th September 1968 — Nature of co-ordinating task •

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1.9 It is superficial, I suggest, to regard road and rail as two clear-cut homogeneous entities and to conceive the task as one of bringing the two entities together. This is far too primitive and unenlightened an approach. Each is indeed made up of a whole lot of different businesses and the discerning observer will aim to seek out the different strands that can be usefully laced together. This is a question which I will explore in greater detail in Section 4.

1.10 Co-ordination should be a positive and constructive Concept. It is short-sighted to use it as a cloak for endeavours to bolster up existing systems and restrain lively new rivals. Rightly conceived, co-ordination policies should allow full play for technical developments and resourceful deployment of new techniques. 1.11 Some 50 years ago it was a matter of ordering the rapidly developing motorized transport activity in a supplementary role to a railway-dominated transport system. Today it is more a question of fitting rail services into what is now largely a roadbased inland transport system (see figures in 2.3 below),