"Cut Back Road Haulage"
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FROM OUR INDUSTRIAL CORRESPONDENT
BRITAIN'S road haulage industry should be compulsorily cut back by Government action. That, says the Railway Review, official organ of the National Union of Railwaymen, is the only way to stop the "senseless waste" of road and rail competition.
Discussing the programme of railway modernization which is going on all over the country, the union say that unless the Government decide on a major reversal of their transport policies, a great deal of capital investment will be wasted at worst, or not fully exploited at best.
Millions of pounds had been spent on projects which were based upon justigable assumptions of either stability in traffic or on expansion. The planners tad been right. The Government, by :heir policies, were in danger of making lose correct decisions wrong.
Especially on the freight side something really would have to be done by he Government to compel industry and commerce to use rail facilities. "The expansion of road transport never was good sense from the national interest point of view," the union say. "The stage is rapidly being reached where a serious cut-back in road haulage will have to be made. And it's no good relying on voluntary measures." • The Government, as custodians of the public interest, must act decisively and halt this senseless waste.
The same theme, of a properly planned transport system, is also developed in a T.U.C. report, published this week. It criticizes the Government's Transport Bill for being based on a policy of competition rather than co-operation; which would never solve the nation's travelling problems. They would, in fact, get worse.
P.M.T. AWARDS
AT a social club dinner last week Mr. Raymond W. Birch, chairman and managing director of the Potteries Motor -reaction Co., Ltd., presented 44 longservice awards to members of the staff, 16 of them with at least 40 years' service.
In the course of his speech he commented that P.M.T.'s 95 Leyland Allanleans formed the second largest fleet of Atlanteans in the country.