Roads and Finance.
Page 6
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The Official Mind of the Lancashire County Council.
We promised, last week, to give the text of the speech at Manchester by Mr. Harcourt E. Clare, Clerk to the Lancs. County Council. This now follows, In regard to the fact that main roads in Lancashire are now costing only £40,000 a year more than they did 19 years ago, we think the speaker has givea data which show that the recent rate of increase, over the past five years, is incommensurate with the normal demands of glowing traffic with the County Palatine. We appreciate the broadness of view which has led the Lancs. C.C. to be encouraged to still-further expenditure by the prospect of grants from the Road Board, but the facts remain that the industry and trade of its ratepayers have cried out for such development, and that there is yet much to be done. Even rural ratepayers have the right to travel along the highways of their county or their country, in exchange for whatever contribution they make, and they must be persuaded out of the parochial view that the sole reason for the existence of roads is to enable them to get to and from work, the local meetinghouse and, ultimately, to the graveyard. It seems ahnost incredible, yet Mr. Clare' speech distinctly lays it down, that there was no advance in annual expenditure during the years 1892 to 1905 It is not surprising to us, that leeway should have to be made good now. We are also under the impression that the £6,000 damage case occurred prior to the passing of the Heavy Motor Car Order, and at a tune' when steam wagons with 5-in, steel tires on 3 ft.diameter wheels often had as much as 13 cwt. of imposed load per in. of width.
" I cannot help feeling that, from the local administration point of view, the action of local authorities ia often a good deal misunderstood by those who use the roads. The main question, of course, in connection with the satisfactory main. tenance of roads, is the financial one. If you have. plenty of money to spend, you can make the roads as good as you like, but the blame for not finding the necessary money to do all that admittedly ought to be done dues not rest with the County Council. It. rests, at the present moment, with the Government, or Parliament. In 1888, what. I may call a parliamentary bargain was made between_ Parliament and the local authorities with regard to the amount of money that should be contributed from the Imperial Exchequer towards the relief of local rates, in carrying on services of a semi-national character. That bargain included, so far as main roads were concerned, a contribution by Parliament of one-half of the cost of maintaining those roads.
When the County Councils first got into working order in about 1892, in Lancashire the annual expenditure CM main roads was about £140,000, and the amount that the County Council received from the Government, in lieu of the old grants that were withdrawn, was sufficient to enable them to pay one-half of the cost of main roads, and still to have a surplus in aid of general rates. To-day, the expenditure on main roads has gone up to £180,000 a year, and last year the County Council had only sufficient funds from the Government to transfer £40000 towards the Main-road expenditure. Therefore, this year, the County Council is short by £50,000 of the contribution that the Government ought to make towards our expenditure. (Shame.) If that money had been paid to the County Council, there would have been that sum to spend in addition on main roads, without an increase of the present rates. (Hear, hear.) Failing other items of county expenditure in addition, the county ratepayers at. the present moment are paying very nearly 3d. in the '£ more than they ought to be doing if Parliament had fulfilled its duty to the County Council. (Hear, hear.)
" It is true that a very good step, in my opinion, has recently been taken in establishing the Road Board, but the Rori'd Board is not a Board constituted for the purpose of relieving rates. It is constituted for the purpose of increasing rates by
inducing further expenditure, and that, to my mind, if the expenditure is judiciously arranged, is a goon thing for the country (hear, hear), for I personally believe that the indirect benefit that is got not only by the motorists, but by the country generally, by improving the surface of the Loads, is very difficult indeed to calculate. It must be very considerable, when you come to consider the saving in cost by the reduction of friction. (Hear, hear.) The rural ratepayers, especially, are very slow to see the benefit that they get by being able to put so many more hundredweights behind one horse, or two horses, than they were before the roads were placed in good order. Therefore, expenditure induced in the first instance with a view to facilitating motor traffic, indirectly tarries with it benefits to a large section of the eummunity.
The Road Board, to my mind, is on right lines, and this year, in Lancashire, it has had the. effect of inducing the County Council to formulate a scheme for the improvement of roads, involving an expenditure of £71,000. (Hear, hear.) Towards this the Road Development Board will contribute £30,000. (Hear, hear.) If that contribution had not been promised, I doubt very much whether any of these projected improvements would have been undertaken. (Hear, hear.) But wherever the money comes from after all, the expenditure goes on increasing, and I think we must all try to find some method by which that expenditure may be avoided, by the reasonable limitations uf the class of traffic on the roads.
" During the last five years. the expenditure by the County Council has increased by £40,000 a year on Lancashire main toads, and I am informed, by those whose authority is undoubted, that probably the largest part of that expenditure has been caused by the excessive weight of a comparatively-few vehicles. You can make a surface to a road which is available for perhaps 95 per cent, of the traffic, but it will not hold the very heavy traffic which sometimes uses it. We get these heavy traction engines and heavy motor wagons, which do not wear the road but break it. (Hear, hear.) And it is the breaking of the crust—and, indeed, the breaking into the foundations of the roads—that causes this enormous expenditure. (Hear, hear.) Now, from traction engines and heavy motor wagons the County Council receives about £700 a year. But on one section of road alone, between two county boroughs, the County Council had to spend £6,000 to repair the damage done in one year by heavy motor wagons and traction engines. " I say the contributions these heavy vehicles make towards the expenditure is out of all proportion to the cost they throw on the general public. (Hear, hear.) I do not pretend to say what the remedy must be. It lies very largely with the manufacturers to ascertain what is the commercial weight, if I may use the expression, to which these heavy wagons and traction engines can be reduced. Probably, by the enlargement of the diameter of the wheels, and by using robber tires instead of grinding steel wheels, a great improvement might be made. (Hear, hear.) But of one thing I am convinced—that, unless the manufacturers of the traction engine and the heavy motor wagons take this matter up themselves, they will find it taken up for them by local authorities and Parliament, and restrictions imposed on them which will be far worse than if they were voiuntarily to undertake to propose a way out,
" I am well aware of the feeling of friction which was engendered between motorists and local authorities at the commencement of the development of the motor industry. I think, if I may say so in this company, that feeling was to a certain extent caused by the want of appreciation by motorists of a reasonable limitation of the exercise of their rights as individuals, in connection with the community. But that has now passed. Motorists are, almost universally, behaving themselves excellently. (Laughter and applause.) The magistrates find there are a few to fine. The police traps are disappearing rapidly (laughter), and I can say, from my own knowledge of the Lancashire County Council, that a most-excellent feeling now exists betv.ect the County Council and motorists, which I only trust may develop and increase. (Hear, hear.) Motorists in the past have looked upon the County Council and the juetices more or less as their common enemies, I trust that in future the County Council will receive from motorists generally that support, both in Parliament and locally, which they must have if we are to get justice done. to the ratepayer. and if we are to be able to maintain the roads satisfactorily."