In parts of Scotland, in particular, and to a lesser degree in Wales and the West country, road improvement or road construction may be necessary before adequate road services can be provided as full alternatives to the rail services which exist at present. Some of these road improvements are required, in any case, for development of the motor tourist trade, on which the future of these areas so greatly depends.
Suburban Services
The feature which distinguishes suburban services from a railway point of view, apart from the obvious fact that they are in suburban areas, is the intensity of the peaks caused by the daily movement of population in and out of focal cities. The other feature which distinguishes them in practice, though not of necessity, is a sub-normal level of fares.
The location of suburban services is made readily visible on the passenger traffic density map by the thickening of the lines in the vicinity of a few of the larger cities. London is the centre of a preponderant proportion of all such services in the country, and the characteristic morning and evening peaking of traffic intensity is more pronounced there than anywhere else. Outside London, there are only eight areas in which rail services are major contributors to the total daily flux of people in and out of the focal cities, these being Glasgow, Edinburgh, Newcastle, Manchester, Liverpool, Leeds, Birmingham and Cardiff.
To a greater or lesser degree, the pattern of life in all these areas is dependent upon continued operation of the suburban rail services, and to the life of London they are essential. It is, therefore, unthinkable to most people that these services might be closed, but that is no reason why they should be provided below cost.
In 1961, suburban services as a whole produced a gross revenue of £39·8 m. which was just less than their direct costs, and fell short of covering their total costs by £25 m. It is, however, misleading to consider all the services together, because conditions vary appreciably from area to area, and the London group of services is not only predominant in size but also presents problems of a distinctive kind.
London Services
London services, which earned £33 m. in 1961, or 86 per cent. of the total suburban services revenue, came near to covering their full cost. Nevertheless, their financial position, and the fares structure which gives rise to it, are highly unsatisfactory in relation to the traffic and operating problems which confront them. Strenuous efforts are being made to reduce the operating costs of these services, but it is abundantly clear that the scope for such reduction is inadequate to allow the matter to be put right by cost savings alone.
In essence, the problem is this. The capacity of the system carrying these services is limited by physical restrictions, particularly at the London end where so many services converge, and these restrictions could be removed only at very high cost. Many services are already saturated at peak hours, to the point where passengers suffer extreme discomfort, and the volume of traffic continues to rise. The level of fares is too low to finance costly increases in system capacity, but the demand goes on getting heavier.
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