ECONOMY OF TRANSPORT.
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A Problem that the Nation Must Tackle and Solve in its Own Interests, and a Suggested Step Towards its Solution.
By " Vectis."
MORE THAN ONE reference has been made recently in the editorial columns of THE COMMERCIAL MOTOR to the great problem of economy of transport. This problem, perhaps because it is so huge, has not had the consideration it deserves. It is tackled piecemeal or not at all. There has, however, now been formed a Select Committee of the House of Commons "for the purpose of considering what steps it is desirable to take to develop and improve the internal facilities for transport within the United Kingdom ; to secure effective supervision and co-ordination, and to insure that such developments and improvements shall be adequate and suitable to meet the national requirements."
Does the formation of this Committee open the door to the great reform for which so many of us have been asking for so long ?
First of all, it is to be noted that the Select Committee will deal with internal transport of all kinds. In this fact we see the old risk of perpetuating the error of. assuming that internal transport is merely another name for railway transport ; or, at any rate, that the railway is so much more important than any other form of transport, that the whole matter must be considered from the railway's point of view.
The Functions of the Railways.
As a matter of fact, internal transport must be divided into a number of sections, each of which must be considered separately up to a point, after which the co-ordination of the various sections and the proper allocation of duties must follow. The construction of railways did not render our roads unnecessary. As a matter of fact, the development of new facilities seldom entirely dispenses with the need for the old. In the case of the railway, this was certainly true. The railway deals with large units and long distances. It cannot convey goods or passengers exactly from point to point. It cannot compete with direct transport by road over very short distances, or even over longer distances in certain classes of work.
The construction of the railways encouraged an interchange of goods and the frequent movement of people. This, in turn, necessitated better provision for bringing goods and people to the points where the railways could take them up, and for conveying them from the points where the railways set them down to their ultimate destinations.
So long as the railways found in the horsed vehicle the only means of conveyance upon the roads, the • roads were only required, in the main, for short-distance work. The mileage above which conveyance by rail was more speedy and more economical than conveyance by road turned out to be a very small one.
Recently, however, we have developed the system . of mechanical transport, and the experience of the war has now brought home to every member of the community the fact that modern road transport is a most important and reliable factor in our complete scheme of communications.
The limit of distance above which the railway was superior to the horsed vehicle was set mainly by the comparative speeds of the two methods, but partly by the dimensions and weights -of the loads that can be carried. As regards both speed and power, the heavy motor vehicle is infinitely superior to the horsed vehicle. Consequently, the limits below which railway traffic is not econornieally justified have gone up very considerably.
The railways recognize but resent this fact, and therefore it is their policy to damn the motor vehicle with faint praise. They acknowledge its utility for distribution work at terminal points and for the development of traffic in thinly-poriula.ted areas where the cost of a railway is not yet justified. It is their cue, however, to look upon the motor vehicle rather as a temporary and unessential auxiliary than as a necessary part of the scheme of things.
Hence, up to a certain point it is useless to consider internal transport facilities ah a whole, basing our decisions mainly on the opinions and desires of the biggest established interests.
As we have pointed out before now, this course of action would lead to much the same results as followed when the railways wished to take over the traffic of the canals. The latter were rendered useless by railway purchase and control; and, having been reduced to a state of servitude, were not exploited properly, as in France, Belgium and Germany; butwere allowed to fall into a state of stagnation.
The canal system having once become inadequate and essentially obsolete, it followed that the cost of conveyance by water was not as low as it should have been, and could always be made to compare unfavourably with railway traffic, especially when the element of time was taken into account.
Neglected Canals Means Congested Railways.
Ultimately, we have reached a position in which our canals have been so neglected and permitted to fall into such a.state of disrepair as to be a negligible asset. The traffic which ought to he carried by the canal's, therefore, had to be diverted to the railways, and this, as we now know, led to congestion such that, when extra efficiency was particularly required and tremendous quantities of goods had to be handled, there ,remained no elasticity in the system, and delays and inefficiency promptly became the order of the day. To consider the whole question of transport, we need, first of all, as already stated, to -take each form of transport separately and to consider how the maximum efficiency with that form of transport. ca,n be obtained. When we have done this, we can estimate the cost of that particular form of transport for any specific class of work, and Fe can then—but not until then—institute comparisons with other forms of transport. It would evidently be absurd to compare a modern railway with a canal built 80 years ago and never brought up to date. 4, It would be equally absurd to estimate the possibilities of road transport on the assumption of the continuance of all sorts o,f restrictions of an artificial character that happened to be regarded as necessary in the early stages. We are thus led to the conclusion that the first thing for the Select Comm-thee to do is to exereise.its 337 right to form expert sub-committees. One of these— that with which we are chiefly concerned here— should be appointed to consider all forms of wheeled traffic not denendent upon the existence of rails. This sub-committee would start with estimates of the cost of operation of various types of vehicle under existing conditions. It would then consider how each item in the table of costs might conceivably be reduced and to what extent. Thus, it would consider for one thing the cost of fuel and the means of reducing that cost by the creation of new supplies or the better utilization of existing ones. It would recommend steps that would effectively prevent fuel supplies from falling into the hands of a ring or monopoly. It would provide the "effective supervision" to prevent this from happening. The cost of operation must ultimately appear in the form of the cost of carrying a given load over a given distance. That is to say, the cost of working per tonmile or per passenger-mile. The sub-committee would then consider whether by any means the tonnage could be increased without a proportionate increase in the cost and, similarly, whether the mileage could be increased without the costs going up in the same proportion. If either of these results could be achieved, the cost per ton-mile would be reduced.
Increasing Tonnage Capacity of Motor Vehicles.
There are various means by which the tonnage could be raised. Vehicles of larger carrying capacity might be employed, or trailing vehicles might be more extensively used. We know that the larger units aro, as a rule, more economical than the smaller, and, for our purposes, a big vehicle supplemented by a trailer may be regarded as one larger unit, which, provided that it travels at the same speed as the power vehicle alone, would be capable of performing a greater amount of work in the day at a lower cost per tonmile.
Having arrived at limits as to the advisable use of trailers, we have also to consider whether the useful loads of vehicles should not be increased. Here we come to the question of economy of transport in rein.tion or antagonism to economy of road maintenance. There must be some point beyond which the weight of a, vehicle travelling at a given speed ought not to be further increased, because the resulting economy would be more than counterbalanced by the resulting wear and tear of the roads. It is, however equally true that there must be a point below which the useful road-carrying capacity of the vehicle should not be reduced, because the saving upon the roads due to the use of lighter vehicles would not be enough to make up for the loss to the nation in respect of economy in transport: The main question for the sub-committee to consider would be where the limit governed by these two considerations ought to lie.
Up to the present this 'question has. only been regarded from one point of view, viz., that of road maintenance. The regulations govereing axle loads, laden weights and so on have all been framed simply and solely from the point of view of reducing the cost of road maintenance. The tendency all along has been to keep the limits down too low, the only controlling factor being the fact that, were the road interests to proceed to ridiculous extremes, they would stultify themselves. They have gone as far as they dared in restricting the use of vehicles without making themselves obviously ridiculous. The limit reached in this way is not at all likely td be the one which would be reached if the question of transport efficiency had been the determining factor. In the latter case, the burden of the proof would lie on the people responsible for road maintenance. If, fer instance, it were proposed to increase the maximum axle load of a heavy motor vehicle from 6 to 8 tons, the road interests would have to show that the consequence would be an additional national expenditure on roads greater than the national saving due to improved economy of operation of vehicles. B38
What we -want is to Wake our roads and our vehicles together into the most valuable national asset possible. This cannot be done if we set out solely with the object of protecting the roads from damage. The directors of a railway Would never dream of adopting limitations of load simply on the grounds that the smaller weights would cause less wear -of the rails. They would balance the saving due to improved efficiency when the larger loads were carried against the loss due to the more frequent replacement and the higher cost of maintenance of the permanent way.
This is what we want to de with road traffic, but it is what, up-to the present, welavenever done. In somewhat the same way, when considering the question of passenger transport on roads, the subcommittee would have to take all the factors into account. There has been too much tendency in the past to consider one factor alone. Passenger traffic should be considered as part of road traffic, because its presence upon the roads directly affects the cost of operating the remainder of the traffic which uses those same roads.
To take an example to illustrate this point, we should not be justified in employing a new type of passenger vehicle, the operating costs of which might effect a saving of Id. a mile, if the presence of that vehicle on the road involved obstruction which put up the operating cost of other traffic by an amount more than balancing the saving. This is a point which we must .always remember when we. consider the advisability of laying rails upon the public road and earmarking part of that road for railed traffic.
The Incidence of Taxation.
The proposed sub-committee should also consider every form of taxation which directly or indirectly affects the economy of transport. Such taxation can only be justified if the direct advantage to the national exchequer is larger than the indirect loss that would follow any policy tending to discourage the community from employing the most modern_ in achinery. Suppose, for instance, some new machine tool were devised which made it possible to produce twice as many articles in the course of a day_ By levying a tax on this particular tool we -might obtain a substantial revenue. At the same time, we might prevent ninny people from -buying and using the tool., and the loss in national efficiency might be very much greater than the profits of the tax. This loss in efficiency, moreover, might prevent the British product from competing successfully with the foreign product in the world's markets, and the consequent loss of business and of commercial presperity would probably actually reduce the proceeds of the income tax by an amount much greater than the profits of the tax upon the tool.
A very similar argument can be applied to any, of the taxes upon means of locomotion. They are not necessarily unjustifiable, but they introduce great dangers which render it necessary to consider the whole question very seriously in all its bearings before we impose them. The sub-committee would go into all these matters and would finally arrive at a series of recommendations which, if adopted, would enable road transport vehicles to operate at certain costs that could be estimated. Meanwhile, other sub-committees would have dealt ,similarly with other forms of transport, and, finally, the main Committee, by comparing the costs arrived at and the differing general qualities of the various forms of transport, would be able to advise in what spheres the employment of any particular form of transport deserved encouragement. The point is that, until a preliminary survey has been completed and the possibilities of securing improved economy accurately are assessed, no comparison of the various means at our disposal is profitable or justifiable.