The transport world, too, was recognisable and, in some important ways, different. The report of the previous year’s conference to agree a level playing field between road and rail for freight noted that while rail customers paid the full cost of operations, maintenance and the interest payments on the loans taken out to build the (still private sector) rail system (altogether the gargantuan sum of £64m per annum), the roads were maintained by local authorities out of the rates and provided free of charge to users. This was acknowledged to be an unfair subsidy to the road haulage industry and the result was a new vehicle tax, graduated according to the impact the vehicle had on the road and which peaked at £248 per year for a steam roller…no small sum in 1933. This reflected the very rapid growth in internal combustion engine vehicles since the war: by 1933 there were about a million private cars, 640,000 motor-cycles, 360,000 goods motor vehicles (lorries and vans) and nearly 90,000 taxicabs in the UK…the largest concentration of motorised vehicles in the world, compared with the area of the country (The USA, of course, had more vehicles…but much more space.)
And as for the Road Research Laboratory (that would eventually morph into the privatised and independent, social purpose enterprise that we know today as TRL)…it was set up in 1933 to ensure that this new world was built and operated in as safe a way as we could devise. Over the following decades work on the materials, structures and design of the highways network was underpinned by research that contributed to a cleaner, safer, more efficient network to serve everybody. That social purpose is one thing that has not changed in 90 years - TRL is still committed to making the world better by ensuring that transport (which supports almost every other part of society and the economy) becomes cleaner, more efficient, safer and more accessible.
Taking the long view (and what other sort of view will serve for a 90 year anniversary?) what we see in 1933 is the beginnings of the “automobility” world we have all grown up in. As we look ahead to TRL’s next 90 years we might wonder whether we are seeing, now, the stirrings of the “post-automobility” world? The need to decarbonise requires us, at least, to replace all the fossil fuel engines with cleaner alternatives but (and this is, I admit, more of a personal view than an “official” one) this means we will need to think very hard about transport equity because we won’t be able to make a transition to a zero carbon world unless it is, and is seen to be, a fair one. And as we make the transition, we cannot afford to go backwards on the safety of the transport system, which is far from where we need it to be even now. These drivers of change will create new challenges and new possibilities – it seems very unlikely that the world of 2113 will look just like now but with electric cars replacing petrol and diesel ones. Unfortunately (for me) I won’t get to see how this turns out…but I am confident that TRL will be an indispensable part of the story that will be told.
