State Control of Transport Services and Rates in Great Britain

Abstract

T HE process of adaptation to needs has brought about differences between the British and American railways which are visible at a glance. However, there is a continuing tendency toward uniformity in the essentials of the construction standards and the operating practices of the British and American railway systems. The recent swift development of highway transport vehicles and operating practices of users of the roads has proceeded in substantially the same course in both countries. In the relations of the government and the transport agencies in Great Britain and the United States, the prevailing factual and political conditions have been sufficiently the same as to bring about and maintain as between the two countries a striking degree of parallelism of the principles accepted and the institutional means for treatment of current problems: and this parallelism has existed from the earliest days of the railways and from the inception of the motor vehicle transport industry. There are many instances of time-lag and of adaptation to the respective governmental patterns and to special needs, which merely emphasize the general parallelism in trend. This is not surprising, when the similarity of basic governmental principles is considered. The concept of justice according to law is fundamental in each country. The common law of England applied also to the relations of carrier and patron in the United States. In neither country has there been any marked inclination to discard the generally accepted policy of private ownership and operation. Great Britain and America are the nations which leave the greatest amount of freedom to the private operators of the railways. There has long been a conviction that because private operation and ownership might violate the rights of others, and thus would be to the detriment of the whole