• and the way ahead
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POSSIBLE LINES OF DEVELOPMENT FOR ROAD TRANSPORT
FROM A SPECIAL CORRESPONDENT
THE publication of the excellently clear reports of the Geddes Committee and the National Board for Prices and Incomes gives new and added importance to the annual report of the Transport Holding Company—itself a valuable addition to transport literature. The THC report was summarized in "The Commercial Motor" of June 18, but in the new circumstances of postGeddes and post-Jones it is worth taking a longer and closer look at some parts of the report.
There were 11 points in the THC development and expansion programme which, they thought, were items which .conceivably could most influence the position for the next 20-30 years.
Taking them singly, these 11 points were:— Quality of' service, especially in reliability and flexibility, will rise further in importance. The attractions of cheapness, narrowly interpreted, will become comparatively less.
Techniques offering direct door-to-door transits. or which in other ways reduce intermediate transhipment with its heavy and growing burden of handling costs, losses and delays, are likely to be highly economic notwithstanding their relative expensiveness and seeming wastefulness in other directions.
Vertical Co-ordination
Although vertical ", co-ordination of transport facilities tends to conflict with horizontal co-ordination, it will often he the more economic of the two, That is, the fitting-in of a transport service with the production and distribution processes which precede and follow it will often have the advantage, commercially and in terms of practicability and of total cost, over schemes to fit one form of transport with another form of transport.
By the same token there will he a continuing trend to private transport —for example, with the tanker-ship, car or lorry. But the "privateness" may
well be increasingly provided by professional operators working on hire, contract or charter.
For various reasons, including some of those given above, there will be a continu-ancc of the trend toward specialized carriers as distinct from general or allpurpose carriers. Examples of this are pipelines, car distribution, parcels services and so on, where each operator concentrates on, and is more efficient at. the one type of carrying.
Whereas the objectives of economy and control might seem best served by moving towards larger carrying units, larger terminal and exchange installations and larger distribution areas round fewer central points, all these lead to concentration of traffics, immediately or ultimately—and concentration (at any rate in restricted land areas) leads to a congestion which is the very reverse of economic. On balance, the trend (to which there are excentions—for example,. where complete automation is possible) will increasingly favour the smaller-sized carrying unit and terminal, and the dispersion of operations, The economic geography of this small country (with its wide distribution of industry and population dependent not . only on major arteries but also—even more—on a close pattern of innumerable paths, criss-crossing, converging and branching off between thousands of pairs of points over relatively short distances) will also favour the pattern of "small and spread ". The more this is so, the less relevant will be those transport techniques which involve really large-scale bulking and concentration.
In any case, the economics of transport are different from, for example, the economics of large-scale manufacturing. Transport is a service and, moreover, the exposed, variable and " suhserving" conditions of transport operation mean that over-ambitious or sophisticated schemes tend to be defeated by their own refinement. complexity and interdependence, being too easily put out of gear by the inevitable disturbances from outside, and
being also, as a result, too costly per unit actually carried. Simplicity, robustness and unit self-sufficiency are Much-needed qualities.
Labour and customer relations also have to be weighed when size and concentration are under discussion.
But although the pattern of development will thus be towards "loosening", there will still be heavy congestion at certain places and times which will call for the employment of techniques offering the greatest traffic disciplines. Some techniques, like the railways, provide this discipline more easily than others, but a technique which dragoons people too severely will find employment only while the alternative of freedom and independence is not available (as during passenger commuter hours) and will possess, therefore, a re I a ti v e Iy uneconomic basis for existence.
Shifting Patterns
Techniques involving a low capital investment in short -life equipment capable of .being ubiquitous are likely to have great advantages over techniquies involving heavy and "fixed investrnent and slow amortization. Giving the rapidly shifting patterns of transport, cheap and continuous replacement and -development is better, other things being catial, than dramatic and costly "breakthroughs separated by a generation of comparative standstill.
Because of all the II-point doctrine set out -above, the TI-IC is encouraging physical as well as structural decentralization. For she same reasons, it is encouraging roll-on/roll-off shirts, car' transporters, the Roadrailer, modern types of lorry and buses, the specialization of containers, the new port at Felixstowe and the specialization of its own road haulage services in a number of fields.
And this is why the THC is also keeping a close • watch on future possibilities like the hovercraft, the expansion of skilifts in Scotland. the RRollways car transport system, and other items.