sa widespread plot to
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eliminate the goods vehicle
WHEN we have to take a bus for a journey on a winter's day, with what a world of yearning do we stand at the kerbside craning our necks for the first glimpse of the comfortable argosy on its way to rescue us from what often seems an endless vigil. Like the legendary damsel in distress, whatever our feelings during the waiting period they are swallowed up in gratitude for the ultimate deliverance. Small wonder that to many people the municipal or transport executive livery gleams like shining armour and the driver and conductor appear like the errant knight and his squire.
Mr. H. R. Featherstone, T.R.T.A. national secretary, believes that the impression is even cosier and that the public look on the bus benevolently as an outsize teddy bear. At the Western division's annual dinner recently he confessed to finding it puzzling that the general attitude towards the goods vehicle was so different. He is surely in little doubt of the explanation. The public have no personal relationship with the lorry, nor are they encouraged to do so. The driver, although he is still often honoured as a knight of the road, usually has before his eyes a notice enjoining him not to pick up the people who occasionally try to attract his attention.
The favourable general opinion of the bus would probably even survive the implementation of proposals put forward by Mr. F. I. Lloyd, central bus operating manager, London Transport, in a paper to the Sussex section of the Institute of Transport. At peak hours, said Mr. Lloyd, parking meters should be closed on main trunk routes. Only buses should be allowed to turn into those routes or to make right-hand turns. There should be bus-only lanes, where appropriate, with or against the main flow of traffic and no other vehicles should be allowed to park or halt at bus stops in the main streets.
All these suggestions and most of the others made by Mr. Lloyd are excellent. What he should find equally gratifying is that they would probably all be accepted by the public with little or no demur. One can imagine the outcry, however, if similar proposals were put forward for goods vehicles. And yet, as Mr. Featherstone has pointed out, the value of the goods vehicle to the community is every bit as great as that of the bus.
In the field of transport, of course, the true affection of the public is reserved for the railways or perhaps one should say the railways of yesteryear. In those days mere freight knew its place and kept to it. The goods train for the most part had to wait upon the convenience of the passenger train. In these more egalitarian days Dr. Beeching has actually dared to speak as if freight were more important to the railways. His proposed goods services will run to a timetable as strict as that for passengers.
This must seem almost like another transport revolution to the travelling public who have had to get used to the spectacle of lorries shouldering their way through the traffic as if their huge inanimate cargoes had as much right there as the citizens who wish to go about their human business. Not that Dr. Beeching's ideas for equality on the permanent way will make the public any better disposed towards the same principle on the roads. If anything it may increase their no doubt irrational opinion that there ought to be some place where the individual is more important than the machine.
A look at some recent news items could even support an impression of a widespread plot to eliminate the goods vehicle and especially the heavier lorry. The overpublicized series of roadside checks has concentrated on this type of vehicle. The results admittedly have been far from satisfactory but some of the steps now being proposed to improve standards could make it illegal to operate most of the lorries now on the roads. Operators might fare little better with new vehicles built to conform with new requirements. As Mr. J. D. Savage, of British Petroleum's technical service division, told the Diesel Engineers and Users Association last week, no device is yet available that would make any effective reduction in the density of exhaust smoke from a diesel-engined vehicle except at an impossibly high first cost or operating cost.
The same difficulty may well apply to vehicle noise or to braking performance, apart from the reduction in payload which would result from fitting heavier equipment designed to give a better performance. Those interests with a grudge against the lorry have plenty of scope in exerting pressure for higher and higher standards. They should also be gratified by the increased penalties, almost savage in some cases, which have been imposed for offences against the Construction and Use Regulations and the law governing drivers' hours and vehicle licensing. Any tightening up of the law should also be welcome, such as the unexpected opinion of a deputy Licensing Authority which appears to mean that a haulier may not tow a trailer unless he holds the licence to operate it.
When events appear to be conspiring so much in their favour, the opponents of the goods vehicle can perhaps afford to relax. It has been noted with some surprise that Dr. Beeching, in his latest 20-year forecast, makes no allowance for a general increase in the taxation of goods vehicles. All the same, he does not depart from his earlier claim that for heavy vehicles on trunk routes there is a great disparity between "system costs" and the contribution from the user.
The campaign against the commercial vehicle is widespread, In so far as it includes the support of other road users they should seriously consider the consequences to themselves. Mr. Enoch Powell, M.P., the shadow Minister of Transport, has warned his constituents in Wolverhampton that the Government may be thinking not merely of increasing taxation on road users but also of reducing road expenditure. However paradoxical it may seem, the two things go together, rather like the 15-per-cent import duty and the 6d. a gallon on liquid fuel. Higher taxation would be one of several measures to force commercial traffic from road to rail; and because commercial traffic is the main reason for the road programme the logical corollary would be to cut that programme back.
Perhaps this point should be considered by Mr. Lloyd, who included among his points a recommendation that goods vehicles over a certain size and weight should be excluded from parts of Central London.