JANUS '...people responsible for runninA WRITES a factory should be able to won!
Page 78
If you've noticed an error in this article please click here to report it so we can fix it.
out the volume (f... traffic'
SO rich a mixture is provided by the Buchanan Report that almost every section of the public can find in it something to their advantage. The railways are given more than a hint that some long-distance and through traffic should be transferred to them from road transport. The anti-motorist can read into the report an indictment of the car almost as sweeping as Dr. Beeching's animadversions against the filthy public. The motorist, on the other hand, remembers the phrase about the monster that we all love, and feels that in spite of the occasional spattering of abuse both Professor Buchanan and Sir Geoffrey Crowther have their hearts in the right place behind a
steering wheel.
What may prove to be one of many significant asides in the report is the criticism of the prevailing policy that new business premises should be compelled to provide accommodation for the cars of the people working there. The policy has been defended on the grounds that it will help to take cars off the streets. This seems so obviously sensible that it is difficult to understand at first sight why the report should find fault with it. A closer examination of the point may help to illustrate what it is hoped to achieve by following the recommendations in the report.
It is admitted in the report that a car-owning electorate would not tolerate too severe restrictions on the commuter or on other motorists wishing to come into town. There will have to be car parks and other parking facilities. All that is suggested is that they would not normally be adjacent to the driver's destination. This in itself would to some extent discourage commuting. But Professor Buchanan is not primarily concerned with making motoring so uncomfortable and inconvenient that the public in the end will be forced to give it up. His suggested limitation on parking space within business premises has another purpose.
SPACE IS PRECIOUS If the premises are designed to provide office accommodation they will form part of one of the commercial environmental areas envisaged in the report. If they are a factory they will be sited in an industrial area. Space in those areas will be precious and must be utilized to the best possible advantage. In the present mixed environment the approach roads to a factory may be cluttered up with passing traffic and lined with cars, many of them belonging to the workpeople in the factory. If room for the cars is found within the factory itself, it will help to clear the roads but will not reduce the space which the vehicles take up.
The novel contention that a place of employment should not be expected to provide parking space for all its employees is as good a point as any for grafting on to the Buchanan Report the growing demand by road transport operators that their vehicles should not be kept waiting unnecessarily when they call to collect or deliver goods. A new building, according to the report, should provide sufficient space within the site to take all the essential traffic, and this requirement is broken down into space for vehicles c22 loading and unloading goods, space for official cars an operational vans, and space for the cars of essential caller • Elsewhere, as both the Road Haulage Association an the Traders Road Transport Association have pointed ot with undisguised satisfaction, the report makes a distill' tion between essential and optional traffic. "The busines commercial and industrial traffic which is necessary I service and maintain the life of a community" is regarde as essential. Optional traffic provides the user with a choic of some other kind of vehicle or form of transport, or I may even choose to stay at home. Much commuter tray and possibly all pleasure motoring can be described optional, whereas the carriage of goods by road is essentia except in one or two rare instances where it might equally efficient to use the railways.
ANOTHER DIFFERENCE
Having made this distinction, the report finds it usef in order to delineate another difference. The use of cars 1, optional purposes cannot be calculated precisely, because dejiends so much upon the whims of individual motoris Essential traffic, on the other hand, is at least theoretical calculable, says the report, for it is related to known ( predictable trading and manufacturing processes. In oth, words, the people responsible for running a factory shou be able to work out the volume of inward and outwal traffic.
The, report does not pursue this particular line thought. if it is true, however, the factory managers shou also have no difficulty in calculating how many valid( and which types of vehicle, are likely to call in a givi period, what space should be allocated for them and f the goods they fetch and carry, and what facilitiesoug to be available to deal with the goods and with the vehicI4 In other words, the transport arrangements can be plann. with as much precision as the rest of the factory.
This is what road operators have been saying for a loi time. It might be said to have constituted the theme the campaign for quicker turnrouncl. At every place industry or business there should be a need for a calculat amount of space for transport. To provide less wou interfere seriously with the work done on the premisi To provide more is mere extravagance, which is a p( manent temptation to the transport department not bother about an accumulation of vehicles, especially if th belong to other people' and do not therefore seem to costing the firm any money.
Waste of vehicle space does not lead merely to a wa: of other people's transport facilities. It also means tl there is less space for productive work. The propel integrated factory will have a smooth production line whi begins when a vehicle approaches the gate with necessa materials and ends when another vehicle leaves with a lot The suggestions in the Buchanan Report are calculated make this smooth working more easily possible, and f this reason, if for no other, the report must be acceptable the road transport industry.