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Transport: Notes and Comments
Published online by Cambridge University Press: 26 March 2020
Abstract
Two surveys of the future of British transport were published in March of this year: ‘The reshaping of British Railway’ and ‘The transport needs of Great Britain in the next twenty years’. The second of these sets out, in general terms, the relationship between transport needs and economic growth. This article, therefore, does not attempt to go over this ground again: its purpose is to provide background material to some of the issues raised by the two reports. It discusses, first—since this is the main point of current discussion—the social costs of the closures proposed. Secondly, it looks at the forecasts of the total demand for freight transport. Thirdly, it considers the particular problem the railways have, in that they are competing with transport owned and controlled by the user himself. Fourthly, the article sets out some comparisons of railway finances in various European countries. At the end of the article there is a collection of transport statistics.
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- Copyright © 1963 National Institute of Economic and Social Research
References
page 23 note (1) The Reshaping of British Railways, Parts 1 and 2, British Railways Board, HMSO. This will be referred to in this article as the Beeching Report.
page 23 note (2) The Transport needs of Great Britain in the next twenty years, Ministry of Transport, HMSO. This will be referred to in this article as the Hall Report.
page 23 note (3) The calculations in this section are set out more fully in Appendix I.
page 23 note (4) Beeching Report page 56.
page 23 note (5) This is the sum of the savings shown in the Beeching Report from discontinuing the services (page 54 of the Report) plus the estimated revenue.
page 23 note (6) This is discussed in Appendix I, page 34.
page 24 note (1) These are British Railways Board figures of employment on the railways, and differ slightly from the Ministry of Labour figures given in table 2.
page 25 note (1) Beeching Report, page 57.
page 26 note (1) Beeching Report, page 56. ‘In the case of suburban services around some of the larger cities there is clear likelihood that a purely commercial decision … would conflict with a decision based on total social benefit. Therefore, in those instances, no firm proposals have been made but attention has been drawn to the necessity for study and decision.’
page 26 note (2) We are indebted to the town clerks, city architects and other officials of the cities and towns co-operating with us in this survey for their help.
page 28 note (1) General goods here exclude coal, iron and steel and iron and steel-making materials; but it includes other minerals.
page 28 note (2) In the years between the 1952 and 1958 road censuses, road goods traffic had been estimated on the basis of traffic counts reflecting vehicle-miles but not allowing adequately for changes in the load. In 1956 and 1957, when fuel was rationed, road vehicles probably travelled more fully loaded.
page 28 note (3) For this purpose the demand for bulky commodities was compiled for the years 1952-54, 1956-58 and 1959-61; the average of these three-year periods was believed to neutralise, as far as possible, fluctuations in both demand and stocks. Actual recorded or apparent consumption was regarded as representing demand; where no such information was available production, sales or imports were used. 28 mainly imported and 71 mainly home produced commodities were included in this calculation in the following separate groups : Minerals : for iron and steel-making, mainly for building, other. General goods : foodstuffs, drinks, building materials, textile materials, paper and board, other industrial materials, miscellaneous products. The volume of most of these goods is high related to their value; most of them are delivered unpacked.
page 29 note (1) This is, roughly, the assumption made in the Hall Report, which uses the 1952-1961 ratio of general goods traffic to national product (0.9) for their low forecast, and the 1958-61 ratio (1.2) for their high forecast.
page 29 note (2) That is, in 1961 the railways had 7.4 billion fewer freight- ton-miles, Contract ‘A’ and ‘C’ licence road vehicles had 6.7 billion more freight-ton-miles, and ‘A’ and ‘B’ licence vehicles 0.7 billion more freight-ton-miles than they would have had if each group had kept its 1952 share of total freight traffic.
page 30 note (1) This uses the Census of Production (1954 and 1958) figures of 4.5 per cent for the cost of transport bought from outside the firm and adds rather less than this for the cost of the firm's own transport.
page 30 note (2) For instance, the sharp recovery in steel output in 1960 served both to increase the railways' share in freight and to reduce average receipts per ton-mile; and the fall in steel output in 1961 had the opposite effect.
page 32 note (1) Paige and Bombach, ‘A comparison of national output and productivity in the UK and USA’, OEEC, 1959, pages 48-49.
page 33 note (1) The material in this section was prepared by Miss B. M. Swift when at the National Institute; she is now working in the Department of Social and Economic Research of the University of Glasgow. A fuller document describing the comparisons in more detail is available on request.
page 34 note (1) Appendix table 19.
page 34 note (2) Appendix table 18.
page 34 note (3) Austria, Belgium, France, Western Germany, Italy, Netherlands, Sweden, Switzerland.
page 34 note (1) Stated by Dr. Beeching and reported in The Guardian, 10 April, 1963.
page 34 note (2) This is the effect of the closures only, and makes no allowance for any success the railways may have in winning back freight for their main line traffic. Any appreciable success here would withdraw from the roads far more traffic than the closures would put on to them.
page 34 note (3) D. L. Munby: The Economics of City Traffic, Urban Survival and Traffic’, University of Durham, E. & F. N. Spon, 1962, page 217, and BTC Reports.
page 34 note (4) Rural Bus Services, Report of the Committee, HMSO 1961.
page 35 note (1) Road Accidents. Report submitted to the Ministry of Transport, 1946.
page 35 note (2) ‘The Cost of Road Accidents’, Journal of the Royal Statistical Society, Series A, 1956, pages 393-408.