. . . two widely differing philosophies of transport'
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VHATFVER the ultimate verdict on his ideas and activities, Dr. Beeching can at least be assured that he has made a permanent impression on the transindustry as a whole and not merely on the railways. igs will never be quite the same again. Until he came he scene, there was always a presumption that the railproblem might be solved without radical changes in structure Although most people suspected that the umption was erroneous, nobody seemed prepared to so in a sufficiently loud and authoritative voice. . he Beeching plan marked the breakthrough and was as ificant in its way as the seminal work of Charles win. It is not surprising, therefore, that the plan has ulated a barrage of protests from the defenders of the railway faith. And here we find another novelty. Dr. ;ling, whom nobody would describe as a flamboyant -acter, has not hesitated to speak up on behalf of his 1 and to argue the case in public. Within a few months name became a household word, a distinction which ar as transport is concerned had hitherto been reserved ly for one or two outstanding Ministers.
ne of Dr. Beeching's latest exploits is to indulge in fie and acrimonious debate with that well known iter Lord Stonham, who had suggested that the :thing report was full of inaccuracies and should therepresumably be scrapped. Rushing in where even iy hauliers have hesitated to tread, Dr. Beeching conited Lord Stonham on television, brushed off his somet inadequately armed attack and suggested in his turn the National Council on Inland Transport, of which d Stonham is chairman, is in no way as representative ts title would lead one to suppose.
n interesting aspect of the encounter was that it brought opposition two widely differing philosophies of trans:. Lord Stonham's organization may speak mainly for .strians, cyclists and other sections of the community Ler on the periphery of transport as it is generally erstood, but his statements have often been well pub:ed and have attracted a good deal of support from vidual members of the public. As a representative of transport industry I often challenge the correctness of case, but this view is not shared by many thousands of Nay passengers and motorists.
ord Stonham receives attention because he indulges the isport fantasy or daydream in which so many people prepared to seek an escape. It would be pleasant if .e was always a train to take us where we should like a); if the railways could be subsidized, not out of taxa, but by handing over to them a large part of the goods ac at present going by road; if the more awkward loads Id invariably be carried otherwise than by road; if road ilion could be concentrated on commercial vehicles and d from private cars; and if the motorist could have way on the open road and in towns.
itopia along these lines would be far beyond Lord -ffiam's proposals or perhaps even his intentions. But ;eems to point in this direction, and the public are often :k to spell out the missing letters of a favourite word. y are the more inclined to listen in the absence of a
coherent explanation of the present transport policy. Lord Stonham has therefore had a comparatively easy task in attacking the abnormal and indivisible load, the heavy goods vehicle and the C licence holder. Their necessity is by no means plain to a good many people, and no impartial inquiry has been undertaken on their behalf.
The railways on the other hand have had several inquiries, culminating in the Beeching report. And the Beeching plan, so far from giving comfort to those people who would like to see the railways modified without essentially changing, proposes closures on a vast scale. Sooner or later, the practical approach of Dr. Beeching was bound to come into conflict with the popular line embodied in the National Council on Inland Transport.
On this issue, however, Lord Stonham's task is more difficult. Instead of making the running himself, as he has been happy to do in his attacks on road transport, he is faced with the Beeching plan. His best tactic would be to discredit it. This he has apparently sought to do by drawing attention to weak links in the argument, by casting doubts on the accuracy of many of the statistics and even by quoting one or two misprints as evidence of the unseemly haste with which the report was drawn up and seen through the Press.
There is no reason why Lord Stonham should not take this line. From the first day that the report was published, the critics have been busy drawing up lists of errors, the economists have complained that the Beeching approach is hopelessly unscientific and the Socialists have insisted that nothing should be done until the results are known and exhaustively analysed as part of a comprehensive inquiry into the whole of transport. Lord Stonham is not alone. The question is whether he is right.
The Utopian approach presupposes that somewhere, laid up in wait, there is an ideal solution to the transport problem. This ought to be obviously recognized as nonsense. There are many possible transport policies. some of them better than others. An even more inconvenient fact is that the transport industry, like jesting Pilate, will not stay for an answer. It is continually changing of its own volition, in some ways for the worse. The best hope is to work out with reasonable speed a plan, or series of plans, that seems to offer a reasonable chance of success. This is as far as Dr. Beeching claims to have gone.
He has also claimed, perhaps a little more rashly, that his plan was to some extent intended to deal with the whole of transport and not merely the railways. There was no desperate need of this. Road transport operators and users were articulate enough to protest had the plan been very much against their own interests. For the most part they have welcomed it and have offered to do what they can to help in making it work. This was only to be expected. One great master plan would never work. Its component parts would tend to drift apart from the moment they were put together, whereas if each section of transport were allowed to operate in accordance with its own lights it would automatically make sure of dovetailing with other sections where necessary.