Joint BR-BRS Parcels an 3undries?
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FROM OUR PARLIAMENTARY CORRESPONDENT
A NEW BR-BRS parcels and sundries service ... longer freight hauls on the railways ... closer co-ordination between passenger trains and buses ... these were the main Government moves forecast last week by Transport Minister Mr. Tom Fraser during a Commons discussion on transport and technology. These surprises were not given a particularly warm welcome, from either the Tories, who launched a full-scale attack on the Government's policies, or from those Labour MPs who saw " co-ordination " replacing "integration ".
Mr. Fraser said he hoped to announce quite soon the arrangement under which British Railways and British Road Services would jointly operate the parcels and sundries service throughout the country. He was also seeking further measures of freight co-ordination by which the railways would undertake the longer hauls for which they were best suited.
On the passenger side, went on the Minister, he was in touch with all the main transport authorities in an endeavour to get improved road-rail coordination. He mentioned buses meeting trains, bus stations at the railway stations, better arrangements for connections and, where possible, through ticketing.
"Of course there are difficulties in the way, and vested interests are involved ", warned Mr. Fraser.
He stressed the importance of the surveys of transport and land use in the conurbations, and said it would not be possible to determine the full range of transport services in these areas until the studies were carried out.
Great New Authority' "In some of the conurbations it is likely that they will conclude that the only proper way to provide a public passenger transport service will be by the creation of one great new authority which will run the buses and the trains, and perhaps other forms of public passenger transport.
"I think that this is very likely, and in any case there will have to be better co-ordination than there is at present."
Mr. Fraser said he believed that too big a proportion of general merchandise cargoes moved from the factories to the ships by road. More should go by rail, and this would be facilitated by the adoption of the system of containers, loading and collecting, in the areas of manufacture.
Dealing with the Transport Holding Company, Mr. Fraser said it was astonishing that after the Tories had sold off all the lorries they could to private enterprise the remaining British Road Services maintained such a high standard of service. It provided the most efficient public road transport service in this country.
The previous Government stood in the way of expansion—it did not permit the Holding Company to acquire any new businesses without the Minister's approval, and it did not get that approval.
Mr. Fraser recalled that he had removed the need for this approval, except where expenditure of more than £250,000 was incurred, and he said he had encouraged it to go out and acquire private enterprise companies which would be a valuable addition to its enterprise. ..
The Company had made acquisitions to the value of about am.—which had meant a considerable strengthening of the public sector of road haulage.
"Since 1 have been in this office I have impressed on the British Railways Board and the Transport Holding Company that they are accountable, through me, to the same shareholders—the British public," added Mr. Fraser.
"1 expect them to co-operate and co-ordinate their services and not engage in wasteful competition with each other. We have to get the chairmen of the Boards together to discuss what they have been doing and to understand that they have been engaging in wasteful competition with each other. That is the sort of thing that I am now bringing to an end."
Opening the debate, Opposition transport spokesman Sir Martin Redmayne said that the Transport Holding Company had done a good job under good management. Yet it was never the intention of the previous Government—who had created the Company—that it should have the unfettered right to expand at will its already large share of the transport industry.
Of course, if an expansion was based only on good commercial reason, one must look carefully at it, and perhaps accept it, he conceded. At the same time one must remember that the share of road haulage vehicles of the Company had risen sharply-from five to nine per cent of the total fleet since even the Geddes Report was published.
Add to that the vehicles used by British Railways, and these two held about 15 per cent of the total road haulage stock, went on Sir Martin.
Direction of Traffic?
Mr. George Strauss (Lab., Vauxhall), a former junior Transport Minister, said the basic problem was what general transport principles were to be adopted by the Government.
This was not a question of road versus rail. It was a question of public interest versus perfectly legitimate private interest. It was obviously in the public interest that many more goods should go by rail, but it was in the perfectly justifiable private interests of manufacturers and industrialists to send their goods by road, as it was often cheaper, safer and quicker. It was exactly the same with passengers.
We either had to force people to send goods by rail, or throw up our hands and do nothing. Or possibly make such a revolutionary change in the present fares and freight charges on road and rail as to induce goods and passengers which at present went by road to go by rail.
He suggested the Government should either say that it was possible by a complete change in freight rates between road and rail to get goods from the roads on to the railways, or—and maybe they should say this as well—it was inevitable that the railways would lose enormous sums for years to come and We must decide how the deficit should be met.
Mr. Strauss said that to bring Lord Hinton in from outside to present a ' programme of co-ordination was bound to lead to failure. It could do nothing else. The Minister had horrified many Members on both sides of the House by suggesting that Lord Hinton should produce a secret report.
What he would have done, said Mr. Strauss, would have been before any of the Beeching proposals had been put into effect to ask Dr. I3eeching to make a complete investigation of the transport system of the whole country. This report should have been published, and then it could have been decided whether to act upon it or not.
Expressing his disappointment that there was to be no legislative action on inland transport during the next 12 months. Mr. Charles Mapp (Lab.. Oldham East) said that the 1945 Labour Government had evolved out of the maelstrom of war, with the few facts then available, the major Transport Act of 1947, revitalizing and re-organizing the whole structure of transport in the country. This took less time than it would apparently , take the present Government when the Ministry of Transport was full of facts and theories, and had so much data available.
Mr. Geoffrey Wilson, (Cons., Truro) noted that in 1964 Mr. Harold Wilson was demanding an integrated transport plan and the allocation of traffic. In the Queen's Speech all that was asked for was more effective bo-ordination, which, according to the Minister's speech, referred to such small Matters as parcels delivery and buses meeting trains.
"It seems that in the last few months the responsibilities of office have caused the Government to ,adopt a more cautious and moderate fine. I hope that is true, but I am not sure that it is because the words co-ordination' and integration' have been bandied about so much that they have lost all their meaning, and like the words of Humpty Dumpty in Alice Through the Looking Glass' they have been twisted to mean whatever the speaker wants them to mean."
The railways should make the best use of their own advantages, went on Mr. Wilson—in certain cases it was still better to use the railways than the roads.
In the final Opposition spebch, Mr. Quintin Hogg (Marylebone) said that throughout the world the flexibility of road transport over rail was something that had established certain advantages which no sensible Minister could ignore, but which a lot of Labour MPs did ignore.
Double handling was necessary on every rail journey. It was physically an impossibility to place on our rail services the great proportion of the increased traffic which had come on our roads.
New Limits
CPEED limits of 30 m.p.h on motorways +3 during fog and other hazards, and a general speed limit of 70 m.p.h. on motorways and all other unrestricted roads for an experimental four months, were announced in the Commons this week by the Minister of Transport.
He said that the 30 m.p.h. " advisory " limit on motorways to come into operation by Christmas would be indicated by a flashing amber light by the police as conditions warranted.