Immediately prior to the war, in 1938, the number of private cars registered was 1,944,000. In 1954 there were 3,100,000, and in 1961 there were 6,000,000. By 1970 it is expected that there will be a total of 13,000,000 cars registered, equivalent to 24·3 per 100 of the population or 76 per 100 families. In addition, in 1961 there were 1,900,000 power-driven cycles of one kind or another.
Ownership of private transport is as common in rural areas as in towns. For example, the ownership of cars in the north of Scotland is 11·7 per 100 of the population, which equals the national average.
It is questionable whether British Railways meet as much as 10 per cent. of the total and declining demand for public rural transport. To do so, they provide services accounting for about 40 per cent, of the total passenger train mileage of the railways as a whole, and most of the trains carry an average of less than a bus-load and lose nearly twice as much as they collect in fares.
A high proportion of stopping-train services run over routes on which they provide the only form of rail passenger service, and on which the total traffic density is very low. Almost without exception, lines shown dotted or dashed in the passenger density map, i.e. lines carrying less than 5,000 or 10,000 passengers per week, are used for a single stopping service of passenger trains and for light Blows of freight.
The economics of these lightly loaded passenger services can best be illustrated by an example.
Consider a single track route with small stations at intervals of 2 miles carrying a stopping passenger service of one train per hour in each direction from 7.0 a.m. to 10.0 p.m. Irrespective of the number of passengers carried, typical costs will be:—
| Per mile per annum |
Per mile per week | |
| £ | £ | |
| System cost | ||
| Route maintenance and signalling cost | 3,000 | 58 |
| Cost of stations (£2,500 per annum per station) | 1,000 | 19 |
| 77 | ||
| Movement cost | ||
| 224 trains per week | ||
| Steam locomotive hauled trains—about 15s. 0d. per train per mile | 168 | |
| Diesel multiple units 4s. 0d.—6s. 0d. per train mile according to density of traffic | 45—67 | |
| Total cost of diesel multiple unit service | 122—144 | |
| Revenue at 2d. per passenger mile | ||
| 1,000 passengers per week | 8 | |
| 2,500 passengers per week | 21 | |
| 5,000 passengers per week | 42 | |
| 7,500 passengers per week | 63 | |
| 10,000 passengers per week | 83 | |
| 15,000 passengers per week | 125 | |
| 20,000 passengers per week | 167 |
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