from Stan Mills
It is quite clear that if liner trains are to be run at all, haegptiesrsn se attitude of the Railways Board will have to relax, Mr. Fraser may pee by the Board that free terminals are necessary to make liner Ts sone oem That the admission of a Tory concept of transport co-ordination ss nn fesse working between private and publicly-owned sections in the contradic ee mi of competition - is utterly at variance with the original idea propoun = ae practised by the Labour Party, may not make Mr. Fraser lose any sleepe ae those, and the railways unions must be included, who have consistently pe Fe ; integration in transport the present policy of the Railways Board is so mistake that opposition is certain.
So what is the solution? The railwaymen, accused of stubborness, retort that the intransigence of the Railways Board is responsible for the situation. They say that they are in favour of freightliners., They have agreed to allow traffic to be brought into depots in vehicles of traders and manufacturers operating their own vehicles, that is, "C" licenced; they have accepted the vehicles of the British Road Services. From these two sources alone there is a vast potential traffic new to the railways. Traffic now carried by private road hauliers over long and short distances may be suitable for freightliners. The Railways Board say so. What is perhaps not realised sufficiently well, is that this potential traffic is now being carried according to arrangements between road hauliers and their customers, apparently satisfactorily.
The Railways Board believe that part of this traffic can cnly be secured to rail if they do a deal with the road hauliers, The vital element in this proposal is conveniently pushed aside - the customer, the user of transport. It is presumably thought that this traffic belongs to the road haulier and it is with the road haulier that the Railways Board will have to negotiate. But this presupposes that the customer will be satisfied to have his traffic carried in the way suitable to the providers of transport - the road hauliers and the railways. The great weakness of the Railways Board's plan is that they have abandoned the attempt to deal directly with the customer and propose instead to deal with another transport provider, who is a competitor. It means that millions of pounds worth of equipment will depend for its use on the arrangements of a competing transport provider, and with customers remote from the railway part of the haul,
This policy of defeatism is completely at variance with the practice of the Railways Board generally in the securing of rail traffic. Already, the Board run 750 company trains a week for 50 firms, If the railways can enter contracts of this sort for the carriage of oil, cement, frozen foods, motor-cars, etCe, directly with the customers, why are they now choosing to deal differently with general merchandise traffic, which happens to be carried by road? The unions say that given an environment of competition it does not make sense if the Railways Board now abdicate their role and refuse to take on road transport. There is no doubt that the services which the freightliners could offer, in speed, reliability, and price, is superior to anything the road haulier, on his own, could hope to provide. In other words, it is commercially ludricrous to throw away the advantage when the railways could offer transport direct to the customer on terms which could be expected to be more acceptable than are now offered by road transporte
If the volume of traffic secured from this new kind of service became greater than could be dealt with by the railways' own collection and delivery
Mr. Tom Fraser mistaken. ..continued/
services = and it was more economical for th
: € customer and the rail =
kai pel 9 Large for road hauliers to participate. But it te that mg
e ons see such co-operation, and not th
which gives the advantage to road haulier : pepe ita
a a Se There did not need to be troubl
rae the frightliners if the management had genuinely joined with the endian ie
Such a scheme. The unions would have jumped at the chance to show that the
railways could provide an excellent service in order to attract new traffic,
It is not the railwaymen who are obstructing the freightliners
Railways Board and the former policy of the Conservative Ros peel lace
driven the railway unions into a position of opposition. The unions! opposition
which is soundly based, has been grossly distorted by the Tory press because the
B.R.B.'s policy happens also to be the policy laid down by a Tory administration.
That a Labour Minister of Transport cannot see that point is astounding and very
depressing, If he, the Board, and the Tory press think the issue is now closed
they are mistaken,
from the Railway Review of May 14th.