B.R. Reply to Ministry's Road Costs C OMMENTTNG on the Ministry
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of Transport's evidence to the Geddes Committee, the British Railways Board says it welcomes the Ministry's study, reported last week.
The approach of the Ministry's study on the allocation of road costs is entirely different from that adopted by the railways, says the Board, which makes ii difficult to make any direct comparisons. But it notes that both studies throw a great deal of new light on road costs and lead to similar broad conclusions. The B.R. study was concerned with the trunk clement of road costs only and excluded all costs of urban and feeder roads. whereas the. Ministry has included every category of road.
If the results of the Ministry's study are applied to the trunk road system-the subject of the railway study--they still yield cost figures which show that the heavy goods vehicle does not pay the full track cost, says the Board. When the Ministry method of allocating costs is used to arrive at the trunk track costs of a 10-ton vehicle this gives a cost per vehicle mile of 7.33d. as compared with 8.09d. arrived at under the railway study. This,, in turn, gives a ratio of assessed cost to tax paid of 2.38 as against the 2-63 in the railway study. Whereas the latter suggests that the heavy goods vehicle is paying only between one third and one half of the true track costs, the Ministry figures suggest that it is nearer one half.
The major difference of opinion which is revealed by the two studies is the allocation of the .capital cost of road construction between the private car and the heavy vehicle. TheBoard says that the Ministry study suggests that only 17 tper cent of the total cost of modern road construction can be attributed to the special requirements of the heavy vehicle. On the other hand, the B.R. study, using all the published information that was available and confining itself to the trunk system, came to the view that a very large proportion of the cost of the modern motorway or trunk road was attributable to the heavy vehicle.
Lockyees Devon Move: Lockyer's Transport Ltd.. of Malvern, has sold its Devon. based vehicles to Holman Haulage (Exeter) Lid., and its vehicles will now run west of [annum only by special arrangement. Lockyer's is handling an increasing volume of small consignments between. the Black Country and the Bristol area and the sale will enable it to improve its service by concentrating on the more limited area.