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Madding Crowd

23rd February 1951
Page 37
Page 37, 23rd February 1951 — Madding Crowd
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Which of the following most accurately describes the problem?

Political Commentary By JANUS QUEEN VICTORIA, according to the legend, never had to look round before she sat down. There was always somebody in attendance with a cnair in the exact position to catch the Royal Bend. Road transport operators, particularly the little men, understand -what it is to provide that kind of service. Their speciality is to be on hand whenever the customer requires them

On this point, the railways cannot compete. Even the road organization that grows too large finds itself losing personal contact with the customer, and the British Transport Commission's blending of road and rail is likely to aggravate the difficulty rather than to solve it. Integration would not have amused Queen Victoria. Whatever form it may assume, it no longer takes the chair to the individual. It must coax or compel the individual to come to the chair.

The need to justify its existence is one reason for the various devices already being tried out by the Commission to attract the attention or test the reactions of the public . Although the scale and standard of publicity on behalf of nationalized transport cannot be. approached by the independent operators, they may argue with some :ustice that they have no more need to spend large sums on advertising than they have to conduct the complicated ritualistic inquiries into the private lives of the public that the Commission is likely to undertake in increasing numbers as time goes on.

London Transport, which has practised integrated monopoly for a good many years, is -the appropriate Executive to take the lead in making such a survey. Secluded in the older portion of the Ivory Tower, far from the madding crowd's ignoble strife, it yet tries almost pathetically to keep some contact with the people who shuttle to and fro on its services. Just as the exile eagerly collects any scraps of information about his aative land, so does London Transport garner a mass af figures about those strange people the Londoners.

"We Must Know Why" . . .

Lord Latham, cliairman of the Executive; has put it rather neatly. "The advent of nationalization," he has mid, "is of itself sufficient to justify a more penetrating and detailed inquiry into the social aspects of urban travel." Aware that something is lacking, he feels that, I only a large enough number of pieces can be, collected, it will be possible to complete the jigsaw puzzle. "It is lot enough to know the numbers of people who travel," le goes on. "We must find out why people travel; Nhat is the social need and the social justification for ransport; how much it costs the average man and Noman to travel for a full family life; what proportion )f the earnings of the breadwinner and of the family midget is spent on essential journeys." The answers to :hese profound and sometimes incomprehensible quesions Lord Latham claims may be found in the London Travel Survey published by the Executive in 1949.

It may be that the wicked bus and coach owners of )1c1 would turn in their graves if they knew what they tad been missing. On the other hand, they might say hat the answers to Lord Latham's earnest questions ire obvious enough to avoid the necessity of an :laborate investigation. The Survey certainly seems to•

tell us nothing that could not have been found out by easier methods.

It may be true, as the results of the Survey show, that far more people in London go to work during the week than on Sunday, and that no children go to school on Sunday. In our fallible way, we may have been tempted to take this for granted without statistical proof. The average journey of 42 mins. from home to work may not have been guessed so easily, but the pragmatical Londoner is less interested in the actual time than in the possibility of making it shorter.

One or two minor uses have been found for the information so painstakingly collected. There recently came into my hands an advertising survey issued by the L.T.E. The general impression to be gained from it is that the well-to-do travel by London Transport more frequently and more extensively than the less well-to-do, and that the long and boring journeys are principally spent in gazing at the walls and ceilings. Any advertiser, therefore, who wishes to bring his product to the attention of Londoners . .

One Place to Another

But there is no point in my elaborating the conclusion, which would have been the same whatever statistics had been collected. Instead, you may like to have the result of my own survey among acquaintances in London. My findings are that-with a few exceptions, such as small boys on the Inner Circle—Londoners travel in order to get from one place to another, and on the whole prefer the means of transport that is near at hand, frequent in service, cheap and quick. Few of them use public transport between the hours of midnight and 5 a.m., and most who travel standing up would prefer to sit down.

It is not as if London Transport can really help the Londoner much to lead the full life to which Lord Latham refers. If he really wants to know the views and wishes of the madding crowd he can do worse than study the evidence provided to enable. the. Transport Tribunal to decide by how much fares in the London area. should go up. On the other hand, such a study may emphasize the fact that the charges and, to some extent the services, of the Executive must conform to the Commission's own master plan. Apart from attempting to increase its annual revenue to £3.7 m the Executive was mainly concerned at the inquiry with ironing-out anomalies and equalizing fares for different forms of transport and different classes of people. There was no suggestion that, in proposing the various alterations in fares, the Executive had the welfare of the Londoner at heart.

It seems idle, even impertinent, on the part of the Executive to pry into the Londoner's earnings and the proportion spent on fares. The nature, as well as the duty, of the Ivory Tower Is to devise a system of uniform rates, and London's fares must take their place within the system The Transport Tribunal went so far as to name a provisional figure, £79 m., as "the reasonable contribution of the London area to the total revenue requirements of the Commission" With limitations of this kind imposed upon•him, Lord Latham may as well leave the madding crowd to take its chance,

Tags

People: Latham
Locations: London

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