Britain : Large Fl eets, Low Expansion Rate
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by John Wicks
THE United Kingdom, with the biggest motorbus fleet in Europe and the second biggest goods vehicle fleet, has shown almost the slowest rate of fleet expansion over the past decade.
This fact is contained in " Annual Bulletin of Transport Statistics for Europe, 1959." The Bulletin is published by the United Nations in Geneva in a bilingual English-French edition and is obtainable from H. M .
StationeryOffice
price 10s. 6d. The
report covers, so far as available statistics allow, the whole decade 1950-59. A brief note of its publication was made in T h e Commercial Alotor, January 6.
By the end of the 'fifties the United Kingdom had a road goods vehicle fleet of 1,331,000 units, second only in Europe to the French , figure of 1,484,000 goods vehicles—both totals excluding tractors. This meant that by the end of 1959 there was one goods vehicle per every 38 inhabitants of the U.K. and per 42 in Ulster, a figure surpassed by three countries only— Denmark, with a ratio of 1 to 31, France, with a ratio of I to 30 and Norway with one of 1 to 35.
U.K. Increase The rate of increase in the U.K.'s goods vehicle fleet over the 1950-59 decade, however, was an annual average of no more than 4.4 per cent. (excluding Northern Ireland. for which no figures are given). This figure was third from bottom in Europe, only Belgium with 4.1 per cent.. Iceland with 2.9 per cent. (1950-58 annual average increase for lorries and buses) and Sweden with 3.9 per cent., having recorded a slower increase rate. The modest British figure is set against annual increases over the period of as much as 12.6 per cent. for Yugoslavia. 11.4 per cent. for France and 11.2 per cent. for Denmark.
Negligible Proportions
Augmentation of the British motorbus fleet has proceeded in the same negligible proportions. By the third quarter of 1959 there was a total of 76,395 motorbuses and coaches in the United Kingdom, as compared with 1959 figures of no more than some 35,000 in France and 30,000 in West Germany, the next countries down the list. But while the 1950 fleet of buses and coaches in the U.K. already stood at 74,918 units, that in France was no more than about 23,000 units and in West Germany as low as 14,698. Of the 17 European countries for which full 1950-59 bus and coach fleet statistics are given, the United Kingdom is that with the lowest rate of increase.
The U.K. is the only country in which the number of inhabitants rose per bus over the decade, the increase being made up of an increase from 670 to 675 in Great Britain and a fall, not great enough to compensate, of from 948 to 921, in Ulster.
The rather incomplete figures for the relative part played by road, rail and inland waterways in the transport economy of various European countries, however, makes the U.K. one of the most road-conscious countries in the continent. In 1959, claims the report. some 57 per cent. of ton-miles operated in the U.K. were handled by road transport, as against 42 per cent, by rail and 1 per cent, by inland waterways.
Better in Italy
The road share was topped by Italy alone, where 71 per cent, of all tonmiles were operated by road transport. In actual torts transported, latest leading figures for the road transport industry was 79 per cent, in the Soviet • Union in 1959, the same percentage in the United Kingdom in 1958 and 85 per cent. in Italy in 1954.
Albania reported a road transport share of 80 per cent, in tonnage and 81 per cent. in ton-miles operated for 1958.
Of particular interest are statistics for the share of hire-arid-reward vehicles and goods vehicles operated on own account within the national lorry fleets of Europe. France: Europe's biggest operator of road goods vehicles, records only 6.3 per cent, of the fleet as being run for hire or reward, while in Italy as big a share of 19.1 per cent, of the national fleet is owned by hauliers. The U.K. comes approximately in the middle, with 14.6 per cent. of its road goods vehicles being run by hire or reward concerns.
Break-ups into weight classes ol lorries show that in all but two countries the biggest single class of road vehicle is that in the weight group up to one metric ton. Exceptions are Yugoslavia, where favourite weight is between one and three metric tons, and Finland, where the three to five metric ton group is the largest single class.
Information given in the report as to the length of national road networks is impossible to regard in any comparative light owing to the difference in road classes covered by figures and dates at which such details were issued.
The roads, however long they may be, are carrying a steadily increasing amount of international road transport. Thus, West Germany reported international road transportation of as much as 9,981,805 metric tons of gooVs on its roads in 1959, Holland 8,804,556 tons and Denmark 1,528,600 tons. The U.K. figure for the year was one of 30,261 tons. Holland has become the main road goods transit country, and 463,038 metric tons of transit goods passed over its roads in the year in question.
Entry Figures
Incomplete figures for the entry into European countries of foreign vehicles for 1959 show totals of 501,339 units for West Germany, 38,614 units for Switzerland, 20,519 units for Yugoslavia and in comparison, the low total of 301 units for the U.K.
Entry of foreign buses and coaches into European countries for 1959 amounted to 196,147 units into West Germany, 52,281 units into Switzerland, 9,746 units into Yugoslavia and only 146 units into the United Kingdom.
Figures for national operation of public transport road services are given only for the Iron Curtain countries. These include 9,687,000,000 passengers carried by public services in the Soviet Union for 1959, 1,049,900,000 by the Czech national transport undertaking. 589,000,000 for services excluding communal undertakings in East Germany, almost 270,000,000 for interurban services in Hungary and State road transport services in Poland, respectively, and relatively negligible totals for Rumania, Bulgaria and Albania.