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Transport a la mode

29th November 1968
Page 61
Page 61, 29th November 1968 — Transport a la mode
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Which of the following most accurately describes the problem?

Janus comments

EACH GENERATION rediscovers the concept of switched-on transport where the carriage of traffic is the only consideration and the form of transport immaterial. Each time a new form of words is found to describe the concept and each time it seems less plausible.

Mr. Richard Marsh, Minister of Transport, has supplied the latest version. At the Institute of Transport luncheon this month he claimed that the Transport Act represented "a major shift in emphasis from transport mode to transport function". This was the basis of the plan for the National Freight Corporation, passenger transport authorities and quantity licensing. It must be the guideline for "all future transport thinking—especially bearing in mind the new technologies coming along".

Even before the war the same idea was being expressed in a different way. The Royal Commission on Transport preferred to use longer words like "co-ordination" and "integration". At the time it must have seemed only sensible that the new services provided by road transport should be linked as closely as possible with the established services of the railways.

New species

Carried to its natural conclusion the idea seemed to lead directly to nationalization. When this solution was adopted after the war integration was adopted as the password to a perfect and harmonious future in which road and rail would sink their identities in a common service greatly superior to either of them in isolation.

In spite of the clichés and the flag-waving or perhaps because of them a good deal of honest enthusiasm was generated. The movement developed a vocabulary of its own. It seemed a happy thought to discover a new species who became widely known as transport man. He was no longer the slave of the lorry or the barge or even of the train. His mental processes were on an altogether loftier level. He was equally at home on land and water and in the air.

Something went wrong with the vision. Either transport man failed to materialize or he turned out to be different from what had been hoped. The latter-day Frankensteins were forced to go back to the drawing board.

From another point of view it may be that these variations on a prophetic theme are no more than explanations after the event, rationalizations of what has become inevitable. Once the British Transport Commission had been set up there was no other course but to try to make it work. It may have been comforting to believe that one was taking part in the process of evolution.

Whether he. likes it or not Mr. Marsh is left with the task of putting the Transport Act into effect. As the interview by the editor of Commercial Motor shows, he is tackling it with vigour and common sense. At the same time he must not give the impression that the task is a burden. He must present the Act as a great step forward in keeping with modern needs.

The supposed transition from mode to function provides a neat epigram for this purpose. Mr. Marsh explained it a little more fully in the interview. In a visit to a transportation research forum in Kansas he was struck with the impression that the audience was made up of professional transport people—"not railway people or road people or bus people".

He condemned what he called the "obsession with modes" and compared the situations in transport and in power. The public wanted a supply of energy, he said, and were not interested whether it came from coal, gas, oil or electricity.

The analogy is not particularly happy. There is far more prejudice among users of power than among users of transport. The providers of energy seem often to compete with each other more fiercely than the railways and road operators. Although the power industries are all nationalized they make no attempt at integration and whatever co-ordination is necessary is imposed upon them by their Ministry.

Co-operation

Co-operation among transport operators is considerable and increasing. This has little to do with legislation past or present. There is a growing field in which road transport is the only possible medium. Where a choice exists there is little evidence that operators do not arrange to give their customers the best service whether or not this involves the use of their own vehicles.

The latest statistics for the number of containers carried by the Freightliner services of the railways show that the total has trebled in the past year and that 45 per cent of the traffic came from hauliers or from the railways' own sundries division. This gives no indication of failure by operators to recognize transport as a function rather than a mode.

Clearly what Mr. Marsh had to say is relevant to the National Freight Corporation and to the Passenger Transport Authorities irrespective of whether these organizations are best suited to the purpose. It is hard to see why he should have included quantity licensing in his mathematical formula of modes and functions. The individual trader or manufacturer has a transport problem. He wants transport for his goods. No doubt he needs the combination of speed, reliability and cost laid down in the Act. In so far as he can assess the total real cost each year he wants it to be as low as possible. If he passes the traffic to a professional carrier he expects that carrier to act on the same basis. Where appropriate the haulier should use the railways and the railways use road transport. This is a familiar example of transport functioning on the lines that Mr. Marsh has in mind.

Quantity licensing will cut acrogs this. It takes the determination of what is best for him out of the hands of the trader or the haulier. Only if a decision against him is likely to be to his "serious detriment" will his own welfare be taken into consideration.

Integration

Whatever attempts are made to disguise it the purpose of quantity licensing is to transfer traffic from road to rail. The rail

ways are losing money and they have surplus capacity which is going to waste. It

is therefore, the argument runs, in the national interest that traffic should be diverted to them.

Irrespective of the rights or wrongs of the argument there is no doubt that it is con ducted in the interests of a mode of trans port rather than the overall function. By interfering with the choice of the customer quantity licensing is a retrograde step.

Integration has always been the practice although other words may have been used

to describe it. Almost inevitably it will become more common. Mr. Marsh is right in detecting a "major shift" from mode to function. Where he is mistaken is in claiming the credit for the Transport Act.

The important developments are taking place to a large extent outside the scope of the Act, wide though that may be. The obvious example is containerization and this brings in shipping interests as well as inland forms of transport. The subject has become international and the danger is that the interests of the transport user may be subordinated to the interests of standardization.

It is on controversial growing points such as this that the Government should be direct ing its attention. Attempts to get the balance

right between road and rail will be of little use even if they are successful unless outside

circumstances remain unchanged. The activities of shipping companies or of container consortia may, regardless of intention, have a more profound effect than all the changes consciously introduced by the Act.

As so often happens the legislation may have been brought in at the wrong time for

the wrong purpose to meet a situation which

no longer exists. Quantity licensing or transport a la mode, in particular, by hindering

the natural development of long-distance transport may be holding up the functional approach which the Minister has declared to be its aim. There is still time to think again about this contentious provision.


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