onomania
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COMMENTARY by JANUS
ACCORD1NG to the records Lord Stonham is a man of diverse interests, but he runs the risk of being accused of monomania if he continues much longer with his fanatical campaign against the heavy goods vehicle operator. He does not seem to mind in whose name and under whose auspices the campaign is run. When the Road and Rail Association died under him, as a result of the withdrawal by Dr. Beeching of the financial support previously given, Lord Stonham became chairman of the National Standing Joint Council on Road and Rail Traffic Problems, and subsequently of a similar body called the National Council of Inland Transport.
The latest move by this body is the launching of a campaign to "save our railways "—presumably from themselves. At least there is no doubt now on which side Lord Stonham finds himself. The avowed object of the Road and Rail Association was to examine the freight transport situation dispassionately and decide what steps ought to be taken in the general national interest. Few people can have been deceived by this show of neutrality, but it was maintained obstinately to the end. The new National Council, in spite of carrying on the tradition of choosing a grandiloquent and misleading title, is more open in declaring that it "stands for the development of an integrated inland transport system and seeks the recognition of the real costs and social values in the assessment of the comparative advantages of the various forms of transport ".
IN pursuance of this object, Lord Stonham and other officials of the council are stumping the country protesting at rail closures and arguing that there must be a common financial yardstick for judging the relative efficiency of road and rail. Something like this has been urged by road users for many years. They have pointed out that they pay some £700 m. in special taxation in a year, in return for which the Government are now spending a little over £100 m. on the roads. The railways on the other hand are responsible for their own tracks, of which they have the sole use, but are not required to pay fuel tax or licence duties. This varying treatment might provide a suitable basis for arguments about a "common financial yardstick ", although the Government has refused to accept the policy of earmarking specific taxation for specific expenditure.
Anyone who has studied Lord Stonham's pronouncements on the subject will know that he agrees neither with the Government nor with road users. He thinks they should pay the proper cost of the roads, and he puts this cost at an astronomical figure. His latest estimate is that road users are receiving a subsidy ten times greater than the current losses on the railways. This is a favourite theme he has indulged More than once. He includes in his estimate the supposed replacement cost of every mile of road in Britain, the cost of police, road signs, road accidents and damage to buildings, and the economic and social losses caused by congestion, noise, vibration, fumes and so on. To defray all these items on Lord Stonham's assessment, road taxation would have to increase to something like one third of all national revenue.
Statistics to Lord Stonham seem very much like words to Humpty Dumpty. They mean just what he chooses them to mean. He produces them continually in order to support his arguments. Recent examples are that "a 10-ton lorry does 60 times as much damage to the road as a 1-ton lorry ", and that 85,000 people were killed or seriously injured on the roads each year compared with only 100 or so in train accidents.
To the right audience, these figures may seem horrific and convincing. In fact, the comparisons are meaningless as well as incorrect. One might reasonably expect that on the whole a heavy vehicle would do more damage to the road surface than a lighter vehicle, and this fact may be reflected in the very considerable difference in the rates of taxation. If any test has been made (which one may doubt) to indicate that the damage is 60 times greater, the fault might more reasonably be attributed to the road surface than to the vehicles. This apparently was the opinion of the Ministry of Transport when excessive damage was found on the slow lane of the LondonBirmingham motorway. There was general agreement with the inference that the surface should have been made stronger in the first place.
It is equally difficult to find chapter and verse for Lord Stonham's accident statistics. In 1961, the year that presumably he had in mind, there were 7,000 deaths from road accidents, and 85,000 people were seriously injured. This is considerably more than Lord Stonham's total, but he is even less accurate when he comes to deal with train accidents. Among railway casualties in 1961, there were 262 deaths alone, and there were 22,241 people injured. Even these more accurate figures might appear to show the railways in a better light. There can, however, be no real comparison between what happens on a form of transport where the professional providers have their track completely to themselves, and on the roads which cornmercial-vehicle operators have to share with a very much greater number of motorists, cyclists and pedestrians.
A more serious objection to Lord Stonham's method of argument is that accident rates do not really enter into the road-rail controversy and in any event would not greatly be affected by his proposed " solution ", which is by and large that a proportion of the heavy goods traffic at present going by road should be transferred to the railways. Better roads, segregation of traffic and other improvements could make a dramatic reduction in the number of road accidents. This is not likely to follow the withdrawal of some of the heavier goods vehicles, which, taken as a whole, are involved in only one out of every 26 casualties where there are accidents.
If Lord Stonham proposes, to continue putting forward his case in public, operators and their drivers might take the opportunity to be present, to dispute his facts and figures and to give their own point of view. Lack of statistics and other information may handicap them, although it does not seem to have the same cramping effect on Lord Stonham. Even if nothing else is achieved, it might be worth while eliciting from him the extent of his support. There may be some significance in the fact that prominent members on his council represent interests such as cyclists and pedestrians, who share the privilege of being road users without having to pay for it. At least there is no longer any doubt where the council stands. It makes no pretence of being impartial. There is all the more justification for making sure that the other side of the case is presented.