ANOTHER VIEW
Page 65
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NETHER or not the observer sees most of the VVgame, he certainly has a different point of view . from the players and can often cast a new light on an old problem. This may be the case even when he misinterprets some of the things he sees. A recent contri,butor, to the British Transport Review, Sylvia Trench, deseribes,herself as an economist and student of transport policy. She may, therefore, be better able than the expert to, take a detached view of the subject, while being also more susceptible to popular prejudices and fallacies. She makes some interesting points and, at the same time, shows hOW:easily the outsider can go astray.
The ternpta.tion is to imagine that there is a single basic cause of the transport problem and, therefore, a single basic solution. One persistent resulting error is the assumption that passenger and freight transport may both be treated in the same way. The illusion is encouraged by the fact that the railways carry both goods and passengers over the same track and that the public still think first of the railways when they think of transport. They do not give sufficient weight to the differences between the two main kinds of traffic. So strong is the conviction that there is really no difference at all that facts and figures are assembled as proof without the slightest suspicion that they really .point in the opposite direction.
Popular Opinion What the public think about transport must have a considerable effect upon the decisions in Parliament, so that it is worth paying close attention to popular opinion, even when it is mistaken, The writer of the article to which I have referred has fallen into the trap of confusing the goods and the passenger problems, and has even assembled what she may consider reasonably conclusive evidence.
The article notes. correctly enough, that on the railways in recent years the volume of passenger traffic has slightly increased, whereas there has been a substantial and continuous fall in goods traffic. No particular significance is attached to this contrast, perhaps because it would disturb the writer's theme. She is anxious to establish that the traffic is passing to the private car and the C-licensed goods vehicle, and the argument would lose much of its force unless both tendencies are shown to be pronounced. The article makes the categorical statement that the public road services are facing problems similar to those of the railways. "While the share of the total traffic carried by road is increasing, only the private forms of road transport are taking part in this expansion."
Statistics are then produced in support. They are straightforward on the passenger side, where there has been a fall of 17 per cent (from 16,700m. to 13,800m.) between 1950 and 1958 in the total number of passenger journeys on buses, coaches, trolleybuses and trams. The figure of 13,900m. for 1959 was not available at the time when the article was written and does not greatly affect the argument.
One might expect the corresponding figures to be given for road goods transport. Instead, the article refers
obscurely to a relative decline," and points out -that vehicles On C licence were covering 46 per cent. of the total ton mileage by all road goods vehicles in the sample week in April, 1958, during which the Ministry of Transport carried out a survey. In other words, on the passenger side there is a clear-cut comparison, and on the goods side one or two ambiguous figures proving, if anything, that the public carrier is predominant. The
inference is plainly supposed to be that the proportion of road goods traffic carried under C licence is rising.
Proof of the point one way or .another was, in fact, readily available, but if the writer had followed up the stati§tics to their conclusion they would have seriously damaged her argument. A .simple means -of cornparison with the Ministry survey in 1958 was provided by the similar survey in 1952. In that year vehicles on C licence carried 64 per cent, of the total of road goods transport, so that the figure of 46 per, cent. for 1958 'represents a substantial decline in their share. Moreover, the actual volume of traffic carried by hauliers operating under A and 13 licences went up by no less than 65 per cent., as compared with the fall of 17 per cent. in passenger carryings by road.
What do these statistics. indicate? Either in spite of the licensing system -or because of it, the haulier is well able 16 hold his own with his do-it-yourself competitor, whereas the railways and the road passenger operators are not in the same fortunate position. One reason for the difference is simple. The train or the bus cannot duplicate the service that the individual provides for himself with his own car, whereas the C-licence holder—where he is a competitor with public transport—is operating on very much the same lines as a haulier. There is even no exact line of demarcation between them, for the B licence is a hybrid in which sometimes the haulier and sometimes the trader predominates.
If he sets himself out to do it, the haulier can provide a tailor-made service that exactly suits the customer, that may, in fact, correspond at every point with what the customer can do for himself. The rapid increase in the number of vehicles on contract is a good illustration, which is given another dimension by the recent fairly widespread attempts to transfer those vehicles to ordinary A licences.
Even if the customer's requiretnents are considerable and varied, he should find no difficulty in satisfying them from within the road haulage industry as a 'whole. His possession of a fleet of. vehiclesneedmake no serious inroads into the traffic carried for him by hauliers. For example, if his vehicles were designed and used exclusively for retail deliveries they would encourage, rather than cut down, the use of public transport for longer, heavier Broad View Oddly enough, this end of the argument appears to be firmly grasped in the article, which appreciates clearly that in this respect the railways are in a very different position from the hauliers. It is particularly critical of the theory— possibly another popular fallacy—that railway operation can be made to pay merely by cutting out those services that are found to be uneconomic. The user of public transport, it is pointed out, looks at the overall service available to him and not merely at one or two special items. The withdrawal of part of the service, perhaps because it is uneconomic, may be the determining factor in persuading a user to buy his own car or lorry to provide the service for him. Once he owns a vehicle, he seeks to use it as much as possible and may, therefore, take away more of his custom from the public operator.
This is a point worth making but, owing to the tendency to confuse passenger and freight operation, the public fail to realize that the point applies far more to the railways as a whole, and to road passenger operation, than it does to road haulage.