RAILWAYS' PLACE

Evening Post, Volume CXVIII, Issue 98, 23 October 1934, Page 3

RAILWAYS' PLACE

IN THE MODERN WORLD

MOTOR STILL CONQUERING

SOME COMPARISONS

'•There arc today in England, Wales, and Scotland sonio 177,000 miles of roads and 20,400 route miles of railways; that is to say, the railway route milage is Hi per cent, of the road milage, or there arc almost S:'i miles of road to every route mile of railway," I said Mr. Alexander Ncwlands, C.8.E., formerly chief engineer to the London Midland and Scottish Railway, in a recent address in London, reports "Modern Transport." Dividing milages by population, we got 253 of a population per mile of road, and 2194 per milo of railway, or by areas, 321 acres per mile of road and 2754 acres per milo on railway. There were in 1932, according to the Salter Report, 1,000,000 motor-cars, 027,000 motorcycles, 264,000 goods motor vehicles, and 87,000 taxicabs licensed to run on the roads. It has only been possible for these vehicles to operate by virtually remaking most of tho main roads in tho country and radically improving many others. "Some idea of tho cost of this attention to roads can bo gleaned from the following figures. In 1902 the annual expenditure on roads was £14,500,000, and in 1913 it was £18,500,000, whilst in 1931, when a halt had to be called on road expenditure as part of a national economy campaign, £60,000,000 annually was being spent ou tho roads. In ten years, from 1921 to 1931, somo £300,000,000 of public money had been spent on roads over and above the moneys levied for licences and petrol tax. "The cost of land, permanent way, stations, and signalling equipment of tho railways is estimated at £800,000,000 of private capital, so that iv those ten years—l92l to 1931—the expenditure of public moneys on roads was fully ono-third of the capital cost of- land, permanent way, stations, and signalling on the railways. MONEY SPENT. "A comparison of road and railway expenditure is interesting. Road expenditure in 1914 was £102 per mile, and, taking tho figure of £60,000,000 in the Salter Report of 1932, it was at that date £340 per mile, an increase of £238 per mile, or 230 per cent. Comparative figures for the railways are: — Miles open for traffic 20,400 Track miles (almost double tho route miles) 37,000 Sidings (40 per cent, of track miles) '15,000 "In round figures, the maintenance and renewal of these 37,000 miles of railway track was: — - 1913 £172 per mile 1930 £314 per mile "There was thus an increase of £142 per mile, or S3 per cent., as against tho incrcaso in road expenditure in the same period of over 230 per cent. "On tlio railways and in railway shops there are almost exactly 517,000 males employed. Dividing this number by the 20,400 miles of lino open for traffic, we get 25.3 males per mile of railway. If distributed along these 20,400* miles, thero would be a man every 70yds, and in addition, there is a female at every milo post. Thero arc said to be 65,000 clerks employed on tho railways; that is to say, 13.2 per cent. of tbo'male staff, or 3.33 per mile. "In British railways tho total capital amounts to £1,100,000,000, of which £500,000,000 have been spent on land, earthworks, fencing, drainage, bridges, viaducts, tunnels, stations, goods and passenger yards, engineering shops, engine sheds, water supplies, sewago system, etc. THE UPKEEP. "The maintenance and renewal of these works, which represent 724 per cent, of railway capital, aro the work of the permanent way department, and it necessitates tho services of 14.1 per cent, of the total number of railway employees, leaving 85.9 per cent., of which 83 per cent, is required to maintain the engines, rolling stock, machinery, and equipment, etc., and to operate the services provided. "The striking feature of a railway is that so much of its capital has to bo spent in providing its route, or way. Every railway competitor, with tho exception of the canal and with the partial exception of tho road, has his pathway provided free of cost. Nothing is to pay for the use of the sea or the air by shipping or aircraft, and tho | road user has a free highway unless his licence and petrol duties he held as a contribution by him to road expenditure. "The road hauler can pick and choose the traffic he carries. Ho is a mobile single-unit carrier, whereas tho railway is a multiple-unit mass-move-ment carrier. It is for this reason that, even in a bad trade year like 1931. there were still .250,000,000 tons of goods which the railways had to carry as well as .1,186,000,000 passengers who made train journeys. "Nevertheless one reads of a works' day excursion taking place when 1500 persons—sufficient to fill four railway trains—aro being taken by road iv fifty buses travelling at 100 yards apart a I distance, out and home, of 240 miles. A I train of buses almost three miles long dealing with a mass movement of people, just as the railway could. Wu live, indeed, in a changing world, and our railways, now over a hundred years old, will have to reorient their outlook, so that they may keep in phase with these changes."