CLASH OF IDEOLOGIES
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SUPERFICIALLY the attack at Bristol on Friday by the chairman of the Road Haulage Association on the whole concept of the Channel Tunnel seems to repeat with overtones the opinion of Mr. S. E. Raymond, chairman of the British Railways Board, that the project should be abandoned unless work on it could begin within a year. Further consideration indicates that the overtones are perhaps just as important as the main theme.
Road and rail thinking are fundamentally different. The railways must direct their policy towards concentration and road operators towards dispersal. The disadvantage which hauliers see in a fixed Channel link is that it will drive a disproportionate volume of import or export traffic towards a single point of entry or of exit.
THE MODERN TREND Undoubtedly, this runs counter to the modern trend. Delays and labour troubles at many of the major ports are prompting traders and manufacturers to divert traffic to some of the smaller ports which can be reached with equal ease, at least by rad. There are now a dozen or so places around the coast from which roll-on/roll-off ferries operate to the Continent or to Ireland, and the number of these services is increasing. New developments, such as the hovercraft, which may well be able to prove their seaworthiness in due . course, require no elaborate port installations.
Intelligent use of the modern trend will help to solve the modern difficulty of spreading traffic more smoothly over the road system. The railways' approach is almost exactly the opposite. Their aim is to attract as much traffic as possible to the main lines and to dispose of neglected branch lines which cannot be made profitable. Their big disadvantage in Britain is that no large industrial or urban centre is more than 100 miles from a port. This may help to account for the fact that the volume of railborne traffic passing through the main cargo ports is only about 12 per cent of the total.
CRAILWAYS WELCOME CONTAINERS
For this reason as well as others the railways have been bound to welcome the increase in the use of containers, including those arriving from the USA. As more and more ships are built or adapted for container traffic the owners will tend to restrict their sailings to and from the comparatively few ports properly equipped with container berths. These ports are likely to be those towards which the railways will continue to run freight services and they will also benefit from the fact that the land journey will on average be longer.
The railways see many other advantages which could accrue to them from present developments. An interesting competitive situation between road and rail could arise from the clash of ideologies. The result should be very much to the advantage of trade and industry and of the public in general. The only danger lies in the premature resolution of the struggle in favour of one form of transport or the other by a government committed to a policy of integration at all costs.
How much the struggle depends upon geographical considerations can be seen from a comparison with what is happening in some other countries. In Australia, for example, where a few years ago road operators seemed set fair on the way towards putting the railways out of business, the widely held opinion is now that the tide has turned in favour of the railways and of shipping interests. It must be small consolation to the road operators that their own competition has been largely responsible for the railways' improved efficiency.
ENORMOUS DISTANCES What immediately strikes the observer in Australia is the enormous distances involved. Most of the interior is sparsely populated or inhabited and 80 per cent of the population live within 50 miles of the sea. The towns are strung out along 4,500 miles of coastline. Journeys of 3,500 miles or more are not uncommon. In these circumstances it may be surprising that road transport developed at all, especially when it is remembered that operators are • taxed deliberately in order to subsidize the railways.
As in Britain the railways in Australia have improved their techniques and methods of operation. What is considered by many people to be the most significant change, however, is the concentration on the mainline run, leaving a forwarding agent to arrange the terminal functions and to do the paperwork. At the same time the railways have developed warehouses and distribution centres all over the country.
Another important change ultimately may be made. At present each State runs its own railway system and there would be obvious advantages from a reorganization on an inter-State basis.
Road operators at least have reason to be pleased at the distinction between State and Commonwealth. The discriminatory tax imposed nearly 30 years ago was 3d. per ton/mile in New South Wales and the whole of the revenue was paid to the railways as compensation for work which they had lost through so-called unfair road competition. The tax is based on the unladen weight plus the carrying capacity, so that for the journey of a semi-trailer with a 15-ton load between Sydney and Albury, a distance of 364 miles, the protection tax would reach the crippling total of £109 4s., or £218 8s. for the return trip.
CELEBRATED LEGAL DECISION However, a celebrated legal decision in 1954 denied to the authorities in one State the right to collect the tax from operators taking traffic into another. The subsequent increase in the number of goods vehicles on the roads must have resembled the rush to the haven of the C licence following nationalization of long-distance transport in Britain. One unexpected result of the judgment, apparently so adverse to the railways, was that it stimulated them to compete more vigorously. The amount of traffic which they carried increased and so did their profits. There is in this circumstance yet another warning to British legislators.
Nor are Australian hauliers lacking in enterprise. According to the annual report for 1964 of the New South Wales Commissioner for Motor Transport, it has become a common practice for operators taking a load of wool from the north-west of the State to a town on the coast to take the traffic into Queensland where another carrier brings it back again over the border. By this means the haulier avoids paying the tonmile tax and the railways get nothing. In the light of what has happened over the past few years this may be doing them a good turn.