Do we need a new institute?
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I SEE from Commercial Motor of March 5 that a new institute — the Institute of Road Transport Management — has been set up with a range of aims in this connection.
Competition in any sphere can act as a spur but experience shows the possible concurrent danger of over provision and the problems and failures which this can bring about. My long-held view is that while the case for transport must continuously be put very strongly to the public and government, in order to do this the important and underlying need is for fewer, more powerful voices rather than a number of weaker ones.
I therefore argue that the industry would be better advised and served by reinforcing, supporting and building on existing major organisations — perhaps with some rationalisation — both professional and commercial, and not to encourage a form of secondary growth.
You will appreciate, Sir, that I strongly question the wisdom and practical sense in establishing yet another organisation which cannot thereby increase strength and whose stated aims and functions, individual and collective, representing a total overlap, are fully catered for elsewhere and have been so over a long period.
I do not impugn the motives of the founders but I suggest that considering what they appear to be seeking to achieve, their action could prove to be counter-productive in terms of value to the individual and the industry, the power of the transport voice and the strength of its case.
D. N. LOCKE Director-General Chartered institute of Transport London