LEFT BEHIND
Page 64
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BEFORE the Labour Party, in their anxiety to have at least one point on which they are in agreement, commit themselves irretrievably to reaffirming their intention to take road haulage back into public ownership, they should have another look at the transport industry in general.
The programme from which they seem unable to shake themselves" free may. have looked respectable and even plausible in the distant days when it was first formulated. Any enthusiasm it now arouses must be a compound of nostalgia. loyalty to the Party and a refusal to believe that words that once sounded so good could possibly lose their magic through the passage of time.
Admittedly it is not easy to find out the facts about road transport or to recognize them when found. They form the essential nourishment upon which a sturdy graph or progress chart should feed. Too often an attempt to measure trends produces only a sickly and unconvincing plant. It needs little effort by the Labour Party to ignore anything that does not fit into their policy, and this may be one reason why the policy has survived practically unchanged after so many shocks and disappointments. From another point of view it is all the more reason for a long Scrutiny of such information as is available.
THE Ministry of Transport and other Government departments are in some ways.surprisingly willing to accept what figures come to hand. A. recent Treasury bulletin, seeking to assess the share of the national investment that should go to road and to rail, states. without qualification that to match the increase in industrial 'production, ton miles covered by both forms of transport have risen, but that, whereas ton miles. by road in the third quarter of 1960 were nearly 20 per cent, above the figure for the corresponding quarter of 1958, the rail figure rose by only about 7 per cent. If an index figure of 100 is given for 1958 as a whole, the 1960 figures are 103 feOr rail and 115 for road.
These confidently stated figures go back to the twO comprehensive surveys; of road goods transport made by the Ministry in 1952 and 1958. It was found that the differences between the two surVeys reflected very closely the changes that had been recorded in the more frequent but less exhaustive traffic censuses. These have been taken once a month 'since the beginning of 1958 and the results used to present a continuous picture of road transport trends. The railway figures have always been readily available and for the first time thereftwe month-by-month comparisons between road and rail have been possible.
WHAT the Labour Party should particularly note are the figures for road haulage. They may be a little difficult to disentangle. In their second survey the Ministry of Transport made a seemingly natural but in reality somewhat curious division between transport for hire and transport on own account. Instead of using the licensing system as a guide, the Ministry decided that "transport on own account" included not only traffic carried on C licence but that carried under A contract and a proportion of the loads on B-licensed vehicles.
Whether or not this interpretation is strictly correct, it did nothing to clarify the results of the survey. The unit that had to be used throughout was the goods vehicle, and a30 an analysis that in some cases actually split the traffic carried in a single vehicle introduced an unnecessary complication, which was not present in the published results of the survey in 1952. As a result, many of the tables in the later document cannot easily be used for the purpose of comparing the two years.
The comparison is possible in other respects. Estimates are given of aggregate ton mileages in the sample week by all the vehicles in the various licensed and unlicensed categories. In 1952 the total for operators of A, contract-A and B licences, plus the British Transport Commission, was 167m. ton miles; for C licences the figure was 194m. The corresponding totals in 1958 were 275m. and 238m. The increase in traffic on own account was expected and was roughly matched by the increase in the number of vehicles on C licence. The increase by over 60 per cent. on the haulage side could not have been deduced from the vehicle figures alone. In fact, the number of vehicles on A and B licence (including those of the B.T.C.) has risen very slowly over the past 10 years.
There may be more than one reason, but it.is hard not to suppose that denationalization was mainly responsible for the massive increase in road haulage traffic between 1952 and 1958. The rise in national production meant that there were more goods to be carried. In varying degrees most categories of transport operator felt the benefit and the trader found more use for his own vehicles; but without doubt it was the hauliers under free enterprise who rushed in most eagerly and took the lion's share of the extra work.
DENATIONALIZATION meant a decrease in the number of vehicles operated by British Road Services and it also removed the general restriction of independent hauliers to a radius of 25 miles. It is not therefore possible to say how much of the extra traffic would have come to B.R.S. but for the passing of the Transport Act, 1953. One cannot help suggesting that the amount would have been small. At no time either before or after disposal have B.R.S. shown much disposition to increase the volume of their activities. They carried more in 1950 and in 1951 than in 1952 and about the same 4uantity in 1959 as carried in 1956.
Volume of traffic carried is not necessarily an index of efficiency. B.R.S. give a satisfactory service to most of their customers and a more than satisfactory service to some. They may not be making a fortune for the Government, but at least they are not losing money. The campaign for further disposal that is waged intermittently by a section of the road haulage industry seems to have little support from trade and industry.
In spite of this there is no confidence that B.R.S. could again take on successfully the role of dictator in the field of long-distance goods transport. Even the customers who prefer them for some purposes do not want to see their activities extend. The relative decline of the railways may mean that before long, and with very little increase in the number of vehicles operating, hauliers by themselves will actually be carrying more traffic than goes by rail. This makes the position fundamentally different from what it was immediately after the war and provides another reason for the Labour Party to review the position before finally making up their minds.