Consumer's Choice in Transport

Abstract

1955 saw the beginning of the second decade after the end of the world war of rapid evolution in transport based on the development of air travel on a mass scale and the growing use of roads. The introduction of two new forms of mass transport has led to a relative decline in the use of the older forms of travel by sea or train. Changes in transport, however, are working out their effects faster than the attempts to plan transport systems and to integrate forms of transport by state control and the creation of vast monopolies. State intervention in public transport, to which great attention was given both immediately before and immediately after the last war, has inevitably failed in its main purpose because the most important form of mass transport today—travel by road—is in private hands and is not regulated to any great extent. The number of cars in Western countries owned and operated by private individuals both for business and pleasure purposes, free from all restrictions as to route and time and influenced only partly by the normal economic factors of price, have played havoc with the overall schemes of integration. To many this is more evidence of the importance of competition and of an element of freedom necessary for efficiency, at least in capitalist societies. But we have here a curious blend of competition and freedom, with public transport largely state controlled. The distortions are likely to becomes serious in the future. The great carrier monopolies and international cartels limit the free play of economic forces.

Citation

Lickorish, L.J. (1957), "Consumer's Choice in Transport", The Tourist Review, Vol. 12 No. 1, pp. 1-3. https://doi.org/10.1108/eb059785