Transport Mumbo-Jumbo

Press, Volume LXXIII, Issue 22241, 4 November 1937, Page 10

Transport Mumbo-Jumbo

After the blunt words of the Minister for Transport, who a week or two ago declared that it was the Government’s transport policy to protect the public capital invested in the railways, the return of the Minister for Railways to the old mumbo-jumbo about co-ordination changes the tone of this political comedy again from cynical realism to solemn farce. A specimen or two of the Minister’s reasoning, from the Railways Statement, may conveniently be quoted:

Unfortunately, and in spite of the obvious urgency for decisive action, the adjustment of the road-rail problem in this country was allowed for many years to be relegated to the background, and this neglect, coupled with the continued expansion of the business of the commercial road motor services at the expense of rail-borne traffic, brought about conditions which progressed to the point where the financial stability of the national transportation system—the railways—was threatened.

In this laboured attempt to say that the railways lost business as motor vehicles gained it the significant and betraying phrase is “the “ national transportation system—the railways.” The railways do not constitute the national transportation system, and never did. Through the railways the State long held a virtual monopoly bf land transport, certainly; but as soon as this monopoly began to be broken down by a new and advantageous form of transport, which it would have been folly to reject and which it is folly now to hold back from full economic development, the railways ceased to be, in even the loosest sense, “ the national “ transportation- system.” The national system had the new energy of petrol as well as the old energy of steam. The problem was, of course, and remains, locked in the word “ system the nation was entitled to the systematic development of both energies to a complementary maximum of efficiency. And that is co-ordination. But from the beginning of transport regulation until now, “ co-ordination has been the deceitful slogan of politicians and departmentalists who have still thought of the railways as “the national transport system,” which ought to be protected, as such, against disturbing competition. There has been no attempt thoroughly to survey transport needs, costs, and resources and to rationalise the transport services of the country accordingly. There has been no clear official recognition of the fact that the efficiency of rail services has been greatly advanced by competition. There has been perpetual and false emphasis on the “ wastefulness ” of this competition, the “ re- “ dundance ” of its services, and so on; and the dominant official assumptions have been

that the claim of the railways to transport business is always a prior claim, that the interests of road transport enterprise and of transport users are subordinate, and that it is for the Railways Department to fix the terms on which not only its own but alternative services are to be provided. These assumptions are not likely to be dismissed by Ministers who severally announce that it is the Government s policy to protect railway capital and that the railways are “the national transport system.” A second quotation follows:

Under the system of control envisaged, the whole of the services on certain routes will be under the control of the Railways Department, and, as the separate organisations will disappear, the necessary services by road will operate under one set of overhead costs. Moreover, the Railways Department will be able to route the traffic in the most economical manner m the public interest, so that goods which are now unnecessarily being carried by road will be carried by rail, while, at the same time, where the public interest requires the continuation of any particular road service for the carriage of perishable or other lines of traffic, tins will be provided.

Here the significant and betraying phrase is: “so that goods which are now unnecessarily “ being carried by road will be carried by rail.” The judges of this “unnecessary” carriage of goods by road will, of course, be railway officers, of whom is to be expected precisely that impartiality which will counteract *the foolish bias of farmers and merchants towards the road. The reader may search Mr Sullivan’s rigmarole on “ the elimination of redund“ant units with the application of principles “of rationalisation” and will search in vain for any hint of admission that co-ordination cuts both ways. Mr Sullivan does not see, or will not say, that the principle, firmly and fairly applied, might close branch lines or otherwise transfer business to the road just as well as it might direct traffic back from the road to the rails. But until the Minister for Railways is clear-sighted enough to see that and courageous enough to say it he may talk co-ordination but his meaning is reaction.