Vehicles Cost 14s. 10d. an our I T has been calculated
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that expenditure on motor-vehicle operation on British roads in 1949 amounted to £1,039m—over 10 per cent. of the national income. This amount related to the running of 28,000m. vehicle-miles involving 1.400m. vehicle-hours on the highway. The average cost was thus 8.91d. per vehicle-mile or 14s. 10d. per vehicle-hour.
These calculations were presented in a paper, "The Economic justification of Road Works," by Mr. C. T. Brunner, M.A., M.Inst.T., at the ninth congress of the Permanent International Association of Road Congresses now in progress in Lisbon. The paper was compiled by Mr. Brunner, who is a director and general manager of ShellMex and B.P., Ltd., and chairman of the publicity committee of the British Road Federation, Mr. R. Gresham Cooke, director of the Society of Motor Manufacturers and Traders, Mr. W. H. B, Cooke, A.M.I.C.E., Darham county surveyor, and Mr. James Drake, B.Sc., MICE., Lanes county surveyor.
In the paper it was stated that the need for an economic approach to road works had received belated recognition. The principle now emerging was that the cost of every proposed road work should be compared with the value of the economic benefits it would produce. Nevertheless, investment must keep pace on all fronts.
A perfect road system could not be combined with obsolete -industrial .eequipment. and vice versa. The problem was to determine how much of a community's resources could at any particular stage of development be allotted to road improvements.
Roads a Semi-luxury There was still too widespread a tendency for Governments in their Budgets to regard road expenditure 3:3 merely a semi-luxury item which could well be pruned.
There should be a direct relationship between motor taxation and sums spent on roads. Where this was done, vehicle operators willingly accepted higher taxation, if necessary, in the knowledge that proceeds would be spent on the highways and lower running costs would result. Of the t tal expenditure on transport in Britain, 70 per cent, was absorbed by road c mmunication. The proportion was ncreasing, yet new capital expenditur on roads since the beginning of th motor era had been small. In the pa ) 30 years, new road construction h d amounted -to' £80m., compared wit a 'current "programme of £400m. fo electricity generation and disiribution
A progr mme of road construction and impr vement estimated to cost £550m. w uld save British vehicle operators t95m. per year on the basis of the 1949 volume of traffic. Methods of construe ion of a road system should relate not nly to present, but future traffic as IN IL
The pap r also dealt with the reduction of acci ents that an improved road system wot Id bring. The building of the autoba nen in Germany resulted in a 34-per-cc t. drop in fatal accidents on all roads d ring 1935-37, although the number of chicks rose by 32 per cent. The propor ionate number of accidents on the aut bahnen was 17 per cent. of the numberl on the old roads.