Commons Agree on Need for Road-transport Encouragement
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By Our Special Parliamentary Correspondent
NO DIVISION ON ROAD RESOLUTION..
THE debate on road transport which took place in the House of Commons last week was remarkable for an able statement by Mr. W. F. Higgs, Member for West Birmingham. He moved a resolution to the effect that road transport is an essential feature of modern industrial life, that better roads for its accommodation are urgently necessary, and that Government policy should be directed to its encouragement and development without unnecessary restriction, so that it may take its proper place in the trans=
port systeni of the country. . . An amendment to delete the words " without unnecessary restriction" and to substitute " in co-ordination with other forms of transport " was afterwards accepted by the mover and the resolution so amended was agreed to without a division.
HEADWAY INSUFFICIENT.
THE headway made in the colossal road expansion had been considerable, said Mr. Higgs, but not satisfactory. The system was to a large extent artificial, both with regard to roads and vehicles. Transport charges on the roads were too high and, even with those high charges, efforts to protect the railways had failed,
Had road transport, as we knew it to-day, come before the railway, the latter would probably never have been developed.
The revenue collected from road transport amounted to about £100,000,000 a year, including £10,000,000 in local rates on private garages. The highway expenditure was between £50,000,000 and £60,000.000. Why, he asked, was there this indirect taxation upon industry? It should be better distributed.
Our methods of taxation had distorted design. When heavy oils were used on the roads the tax was 9d. a gallon, but when used on the rail it was ld. a gallon.
From the point of view of a manufacturer, road transport was quicker up io a radius of 100 miles. He had had practical experiencb of missing boats through 'relying upon the rail. Rail was efficient in many respects, but not so reliable as the road.
Non-transhipment and less packing were among the great advantages in road transport. In his own experience breakages were Considerably less. Even with the taxation and difficulties it had to meet, road was cheaper than rail. Other advantages Were its great elasticity and greater freedom from pilferage.
On the long haul there was some benefit by rail. He saw no objection to the transport of fuel being retained by the railways.
CONSTRUCTIONAL FAULTS OF ROADS. WE had as many hard-cored roads as VI' any country in the world, he con tinued, Unfortunately, we were paying the penalty of being pioneers. Many of those roads were unsuitable for modern traffic, as the surface was unsafe. They 'were dangerous in construction, the cambers were wrong, they had sharp bends, and they were too narrow. He did not know of a single bridge crossing in this country whereas bridge crossings were general in Germany, Italy, and France.
In Great Britain there were more
vehicles per mile on the roads than in any other country. The number here was 13, in the United States 10, and in France O.
Private-car owners complained of the heavy traffic, but he thought that was wrong. It was the roads that were unsuitable, With better roads there would be fewer casualties. Did the House realize that private cars were increasing at the rate of 150,000 per annum? CRISIS DISCLOSED VEHICLE SHORTAGE.
THEN there was the case of national emergency. The 1933 Act actually reduced the number of certain vehicles, and in the crisis it was admitted that there were not sufficient. From April." 1930, to April, 1937, there was a reduction of over 1,700 A licences.
That was not right for an expanding industry. Moreover, the rail was more vulnerable to air attack than the road.
As to /imitation of road traffic, he pointed out that there . had been no limitation of rail traffic, nor of tramway traffic. The limitation on road traffic, however, had not achieved its object. It had retarded the development of a new industry and had given little or no assistance to the railways. Road transport to-day in some respects was worse than it was in 1983.
TAX-FREE GAS VEHICLES.
THERE was the necessity of the development of the use of homeproduced fuel. In his view, the gas bottles used for town gas and the extra plant of producer-gas vehicles should not be included 'in the weight of the vehicle. The extra weight involved now necessitated a speed reduction from 30 m.p.h.' to 20 m.p.h. •
In the case of electric vehicles, the accumulator was not considered as part of the weight of the vehicle and this was a parallel case. Likewise, the steam vehicle had already a rebate of one ton. The same concession should be granted to compressed-gas and producer-gas vehicles.
Mr. Higgs then suggested that the Government should permit the use, free of taxation, to competent authorities of some 100 gas vehicles, so that this method of transport could be developed.
In Germany to-day 1,000 compressed-gas vehicles were running with 40 filling stations and in France 120 were running with 25 filling stations. They were also operated in Russia, U.S.A., Italy, and even Australia, whilst in this country we had one filling station and one vehicle running. In France owners of 10 commercial
vehicles or more must have 10 per cent. of their fleets running on home-produced fuel.
Last February the Minister of Transport said " I shall welcome a study of further developments," but further developments would not take place unless some encouragement was given to that development.
AUTOMATIC RENEWAL OF A AND B LICENCES.
THE automatic renewal of A and B licences was then suggested by Mr. Higgs. They now ran for five years. If people were investing thousands of pounds in road vehicles, and the life of those vehicles expired somewhat before. the periods of the licences, they were not going to invest money again, without being assured of the renewal of the licence for a considerable. period.
The licence should be automatically renewed. without question.
Speed limits should be increased to 30 m.p.h. for certain goods vehicles, which could be as safe as passenger vehicles at 30 m.p.h.
RAILWAYS' RIGHT TO OBJECT UNJUST.
UE was opposed to regulations 1 'limiting free competition. It was unjust that railways, canals, and coastwise shipping services should have a right to object to the granting of A and B licences. Nearly 70 per cent. of the objections came from the railways. These restrictions should be removed and the fleets allowed to increase.
The policy he was criticizing was not that of any particular Minister, but of the nation. For years the policy had been to tax road transport unnecessarily and to add irritating regulations to prevent its development. It was, really, opposition to progress.
FREE COMPETITION THE SOLUTION.
ROAD competition has caused the rai1way3 to improve their services, but enterprise on the road had been throttled. The railways wanted decontrol and the roads wanted control of rates. Could anyone imagine a more abSurd state of affairs?
Free competition was the only method of settling rates, He believed that, if the road-transport industry was freed from the restrictions it was labouring under, it would be to the benefit of the industry and the nation as a whole. •• • BURDENS OF THE TWO SYSTEMS.
AQUESTION was then addressed to Mr. Higgs by Sir Alan Anderson. He asked if he had compared the burden borne by the motor industry, in the taxes on petrol and on vehicles, with that carried by the railways for capital expenditure on the maintenance of their track.
Mr. Higgs replied that his argument was that there had been a great many unnecessary artificial restrictions on road transport. He had taken into consideration the comparison suggested.
A28 ROAD TRANSPORT AS COMMON CARRIER.
MERE road-transport operators, AN asked Sir Henry Fildes, prepared to be scheduled as common carriers? To this, Captain. Strickland, who seconded the motion, replied that the road-transport industry would be ready to-morrow to undertake to carry everything provided it had the vehicles with which to do so.
So long, however, asthe number of vehicles was cut down. to such an extent that there were barely sufficient machines to carry the goods, which were required to be sent by road, it was impossible for road transport to undertake common carrying.
He protested that the industry, instead of being encouraged, was consistently hampered and harassed by taxes and regulations, the freedom of competition being destroyed, and traders prevented from exercising that choice of the means for transport of their goods to which they were entitled.
OBJECTOR AND ADJUDICATOR IN ONE. WHERE freedom to conduct busiVI' ness was governed by Statute Law,
Captain Strickland considered that it should be under the control of independent adjudicators. Judges and magistrates were independent of the Crown, Parliament and Ministers.
They were there to administer the law as it was, but the Licensing Authority could himself be an objector to the granting of a licence, and having objected, raised his points and urged his case, he could then adjudicate whether he himself had been within the law in the objection he had raised.
An applicant who had had his licence refused by the Licensing Authority, who had gone to appeal, and had won on that appeal, had no means for proceeding against the Licensing Authority with regard to the objection raised in his own court on which he had adjudicated.
He quoted examples to illustrate his point that in such cases the Licensing Authority was both the objector and the adjudicator.
OTHER UNFAIRNESSES.
CONT1NUING, Captain Strickland ....spoke of the insufficiencies of weighing machines, and of inaccurate total weights arrived at by separate axle weighing. He argued that the "causing or permitting" obligations on owners acted unfairly. In some cases, he said, the owner had no knowledge of the employees' offences when they were committed, and only knew of them when he applied for a renewal of his licences.
ROAD AND RAIL COMPLEMENTARY.
I N moving the amendment indicated above, Mr. Simpson submitted that transport was a vital communal matter, and that road transport was complementary to, rather than competitive with, rail transport. He declared that the railways had suffered as much, in the way of restrictions, as, road undertakings. In 1937 1,216,000,000 passengers and 287,000,000 tons of freight were conveyed by rail. Rash and ill-founded statements were heard that the railways could be scrapped and that that immense volume of traffic could be put on the highways.
Mr. B. Smith seconded the amendment and emphasised the need for more and better roads and a proper co-ordinated system of transport.
GOVERNMENT ATTITUDE.
THE amendment having been agreed to, Captain A. IIudson hOped the motion in its amended form would be
carried unanimously. Speaking of " restriction," he said the word was really " regulation " or an attempt to bring order out of chaos. Restrictions which merely hindered or irritated should not be encouraged.
He asked Members to recall the conditions when the 1930 and 1933 Acts were before the House. Conditions then were little short of chaotic.
He had not heard a single responsible operator on the passenger side of the industry say that after eight years' experience he would like to return to the conditions prevailing before 1931.
It was because the position in 'the goods industry was becoming impos sible that the 1933 Act was passed with comparatively little opposition. Since then some sort of order had been evolved. He thought they could say that the good employer was no longer at the mercy of the bad.
Far from " throttling the industry," there were in 1933 some 370,000 goods vehicles on the road, whereas in 1938 the figure had risen to 513,000.
He promised that the Department would study with the greatest care what was said on the subject of restrictions.
The seconder of the motion complained of the difficulty in obtaining renewal of licences and said' the railway companies opposed applications. Over 90 per cent, of the renewals were unopposed. With regard to the independence of the Licensing Authorities, he said the decisions of the appeals on the passenger side and the conduct of the Traffic Commissioners were independent, and no pressure, political or otherwise, was put upon them.
GAS-VEHICLE UNDER CONSIDERATION.
AS to the gas-vehicle, which had been mentioned, the Government was looking very carefully into the question of its encouragement.
He thought he would be able to show that the Ministry was by no means neglecting its. duty in respect of improving the roads. Constructional work would be pushed ahead as quickly as possible. The Government believed that the necessity of development was equally vital both of road and rail. It would not be party to any scheme to kill the road and save the rail, or vice versa.