MR. FOSTER: CAUTIOUS WELCOME
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ONE or two strange judgments on the road transport industry have been made over the past year or so and have been fairly widely accepted, at any rate outside the industry. The railways perhaps started the rot with the peculiar assessment of comparative road and rail track costs which they presented nominally to the Geddes Committee but, in fact, to the world at large.
As if infected by the same bug the Geddes Committee themselves, appointed to have a fresh look at the road haulage licensing system, came to the conclusion that the system should not have been imposed in the first place and should therefore be abolished. The consequences of taking this step were not examined in any great detail. Their self-confidence faltered only on the question of track costs to which they were at least sensible enough to say that they had no "final answer".
INSUFFICIENT KNOWLEDGE Almost before the echoes of the Geddes report had died away the Prices and Incomes Board published their opinion that hauliers were not justified in imposing a general rates increase of five per cent and that the customers should not pay it without further investigation. Here was another example of a firm conclusion based on insufficient knowledge. A recommendation for a general increase is not the same thing as the increase itself. Most of the customers for whom the Board were being so solicitous could have told them that in any event they had no intention of paying an extra five per cent until they had received a satisfactory explanation from the hauliers concerned.
Whatever the merits of the case the public are inclined to accept the official printed word. On the whole they now believe that the heavy lorry is not paying its proper share of track costs and therefore has an unfair advantage over the railways; that hauliers have for 30 years been protected by the licensing system with no real justification; and that the recommended rates increase was a disgraceful attempt, foiled by the Prices and Incomes Board, to overcharge trade and industry.
In view of these and similar experiences, road operators are inclined to look with dislike and suspicion at the appointment of outside experts to consider transport problems. This may well be their attitude at the outset towards Mr. Christopher Foster, the
new Director-General of Economic Planning at the Ministry of Transport. His very title may cause a sinking of the heart. There have been so many economic plans for transport and few of them have contained much that is sensible and even less that is of advantage to the commercial vehicle operator or user.
That Mr. Foster is an expert can hardly be denied. Whether operators would be justified in considering him an interloper is a more debatable point. He has been described with some accuracy as a transport economist. His major claim to fame so far is that he cooperated with Professor M. E. Beesley— who for the past year has been economic adviser to the Ministry—in the study which showed that it would be worthwhile to build the new Victoria Line on the London underground system. For this alone, future generations may have occasion to bless him.
In 1963 Mr. Foster published his book "The Transport Problem". The title is to some extent an accurate description of the contents. Mr. Foster did not attempt to offer a final solution. He insisted throughout that there were certain policy decisions which had to be made by the Government before a logical transport policy could be evolved. In particular there was the old-established argument about the rival merits of competition and co-ordination.
COSTS—MORE INFORMATION NEEDED To an economist cost is often, and perhaps always, the significant criterion. Mr. Foster emphasized the paucity of accurate information on costs. This applied to the railways as well as to the roads. The presentation of the modernization plan and its revisions had been misleading and had made it impossible to test whether they proposed sound investments or not. Present methods of charging for the roads were ill-considered and confusing, the result of historical accident. There was a case for organizing the road system as an industry with a set of accounts and a welldefined criterion.
Assembling the kind of costs that Mr. Foster considers necessary for his task will take a long time, perhaps several years.
In the meantime it is reassuring that he is well aware of the social side to the transport problem. He realizes that the most likely system for the future is a mixed economy, in which private enterprise will make profits and the public transport undertakings will be governed by what he calls the "consumers' surplus criterion". He appreciates that there are innumerable conflicts of interest, not only between different forms of transport but between different categories of road user, and that the various interests must be taken into account in reaching a solution.
If he needed it Mr. Foster would have had a timely warning from Mr. H. R. Featherstone, secretary, Traders Road Transport Association, in an address to the Yorkshire section of the Institute of Transport on the same day that Mr. Foster's appointment was announced. Too much attention was being paid to such problems as the railway deficit, said Mr. Featherstone. More pressing problems were the provision of better roads, urban transport needs and the efficiency of public transport. It would be disastrous if the Government were precipitated into measures favouring the railways because the deficit for 1965 was worse than for the previous year.
LESS EFFICIENT FOR THE JOB Whether or not the diversion of traffic from road to rail would have some marginally favourable effect on railway costs, he continued, transport efficiency as a whole would inevitably suffer. The customer would have been forced to use a means of transport which his commercial judgment told him was less suitable and efficient for the traffic. That part of the railway deficit which the taxpayer was spared would merely be shifted to trade and industry. In the end the public would have to pay just the same.
Mr. Featherstone's main theme was transport policy in the light of the Geddes report. What he had to say on that subject is not acceptable to all road users but with his order of priorities there would be little or no disagreement. He might himself be prepared to accept that the implementation of the Geddes report could very well come almost at the bottom of the list, even behind the problem of the railway deficit.
Janus