Tough Time for Hauliers—Mr. Nugent
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HAULIERS must be prepared for a tough time in competition with the railways, Mr. G. R. H. Nugent, Parliamentary Secretary to the Ministry of Transport, said last Friday.
Britain could not manage without railways and they were now quoting "very competitive rates" in the fight for traffic to enable them to repay the loans of £400m. which the Government were advancing to cover annual losses until the modernization plan was completed. Only by winning back lost freight could the railways avoid subsidy, to which the Government were opposed.
Mr. Nugent was speaking at the annual luncheon of the Mansion House Association of Transport, in London.
Mr. L. A. Carey, vice-president of the Association, expressed sympathy with the railways, but pointed out that if the modernization scheme were to succeed, they would have to be transformed into the kind of system that might be built today if the railways were being created from scratch.
He replied vigorously to allegations of wasteful operation by C-licence holders.
The major British industrial undertakings had, he declared, little to learn about transport costing. He underlined the four basic freedoms for which the Association stood—freedom of choice of transport, freedom of the trader to use his own vehicles, freedom of carriers to operate commercially and freedom of competition among them.
He believed that the economic climate had never been more favourable to an extension of the road network.
This point was taken up by Lord Derwent, chairman of the British Road Federation, who stressed the need for an inner ring road in London which had been estimated to cost 1150m. It would have limited access and would be for through traffic only. Cheap parking facilities would be provided on the perimeter of London, with car parks built over the railways and stations.
Lord Derwent visualized express buses operating from the perimeter to the centre, supplemented by local buses. He emphasized that improvements without planning merely meant that congestion was moved from one place to another.