Not to be Compare
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by JANUS
THERE are too few facts and figures about road transport for any of them not to be welcome and to make themselves useful. Without them speculation loses its point, although certainly not its attraction. Once they are available, reasonably accurate conclusions can be drawn. Often they are unexpected and could not have been guessed or even surmised without the supporting data. It may happen also that the original purpose for which the facts and figures have been painstakingly collected turns out to be irrelevant or no longer significant.
A good example is provided by those periodical assaults on the knotty problem of investment in road and rail transport. It seems at first sight an important issue. If one can assess and compare the ' economic returns to be expected from building new roads and from modernizing the railways, it should not be difficult to determine how much money ought to be spent on each project. The Ministry of Transport and the Treasury then have a yardstick for their plans for road construction and for advances to the British Transport Commission.
When it comes to the point, the comparison invariably turns out to be either impossible or ludicrous. Nobody can agree on a formula for the economic returns that can be applied equally well to both forms of transport. All the same, the effort has not been wasted. It has made necessary or brought into juxtaposition a variety of surveys and inquiries into the detailed operation of road transport and of the railways. Without some goal, however misleading, the surveys would scarcely have been thought worth while. The raw material they have produced can now be used profitably in other directions.
It may have seemed at the beginning of his paper that this line would be taken by Mr. D. L. Munby, reader in the economics and organization of transport, Oxford University, who recently addressed the Institute of Transport on the subject of road and rail investment. He could hardly go wrong with his introductory reference to the "light-hearted gentlemen in Whitehall who believe that major decisions can and must be made in committees without any preliminary scientific scrutiny of relevant facts and/or analysis of the proper methods for deciding such issues."
MR. MUNBY'S argument is not always easy to follow, though he avoids the platitudes which too many speakers inflict on the transport Establishment as a substitute for ideas. But many sentences might have been drafted by the "light-hearted gentlemen in Whitehall who are the target of Mr. Munby's sarcasm. The following passage, referring to the extent to which a business can appreciate its own effect on the economic environment, may be regarded as a fair sample: "There will be many gains from investment which it cannot see, but which would in fact arise from investment which it does not undertake, but which it might have undertaken, if it had seen them." I remain convinced that there must be some other way of putting this.
It would be unfair to leave the impression that Mr. Munby's paper does not in fact follow an orderly plan. He sets out to discover if there is a feasible way of allocating investment between road and rail in accordance with economic principles. For his material he draws upon several sources, notably the report on the railways made to the House of Commons by the select committee on the nationalized industries, and the Road Research Bc paper on the London-Birmingham motorway. He find each authority has its own basis for calculating what it ment is needed and what revenue or profit it will I Not unnaturally, he points out that his self-appointed cannot begin until there is an agreed common basis his tentative suggestion is that railway investment shou calculated on the method used for the analysis o results from Ml.
AT this point Mr. Munby's paper ends. He expresst opinion that, if studies were made on the lines he prop "we should be in a much better position to make objc appraisals of the total investment in roads and railw He seems to have no doubt that the appraisals are desit and goes so far as to say that it is "more importa. make comparable assessments for the two forms of it ment than to work out an ideal method for either." may still take leave to wonder whether this is in fact and whether the "planned investment for transport whole" to which Mr. Munby looks forward is a sensibl alone a practicable, goal.
The illusion arises from the fact that road and rail t port provide similar services and over a fairly wide are in direct competition. But there seems little more re for correlating their capital expenditure than there w be for taking the same line with, for example, housing agricultural subsidies.
The function of the roads is different from that o railways. It is reasonably certain that, even if road struction stopped, the public would continue buying, motorcycles, scooters, mo-peds and bicycles, and tri would continue to buy lorries. In a totally different sp a comparison might be made with education. People go on having children whether or not there are scl for them. The Government have an obligation to pr( education to fit the child population, and they fur similar duty to provide roads to fit the traffic. If i objected that not everybody is a motorist, the olys retort is that not everybody is a parent; and in any ca is impossible to argue that road users who are paying a £750m. a year to the Treasury in special taxes woul. living on charity whatever practicable amount was s on the roads.
In short, new roads have to be built whether, or not can be proved to be a good "investment." In the same nobody bothers to work out what increase a new se will make to the gross national income. If there are cient pupils, the school must be built. There may also need for the railways, but it is of a different kind.
a more strictly economic need and is related much r closely to what people are prepared to pay for the sei they receive. The Government are right, therefore endeavouring to put the railways on a proper comme basis. It is then up to the railways themselves to carve their own future. The Government may also expect users to pay for the roads, but they do not deny their ultimate responsibility to provide those roads.
Mr. Munby suggests scathingly that it is " best to inquire" how the Treasury and the Ministry mad( their minds in 1960 to cut down investment in railway favour of the roads. In spite of what he says, the inq may be worth making.