Did Beeching affect Britain’s productivity?

[Sad Sprinter]

Just thinking of all the lines, especially in urban areas that closed, that might have held back conurbations outside the South East. Or the other medium sized towns that lost their rail service. Could Beeching have contributed to Britain’s low productivity at all?

 

[Bald Rick]

I should imagine it improved productivity considerably.

 

[Dr Hoo]

There weren't that many busy lines in urban areas that did close. Some of those that did close (often quite a bit after Beeching had gone) such as Birmingham Snow Hill-Wolverhampton, Hunts Cross-Gateacre and the Paisley Canal/Kilmacolm line seemed to be more down to the subsequently-formed Passenger Transport Executives deciding that they didn't want them.

Obviously Beeching contributed positively to Britain's productivity in many ways, such as with Merry Go Round coal trains, Freightliner, block oil trains, electrification to Bournemouth, electrification to Gourock/Wemyss Bay, getting British Rail Research established, getting rid of steam traction quickly and so on.

Most obviously and strategically, he created 'British Railways/Rail' from the ashes of the British Transport Commission with a new business focus, bringing in outside business talent alongside empowering some bright young railwaymen, etc.

 

[Iskra]

It probably boosted the railway’s productivity, but the continued rise of the private motorcar was probably far more important than the railway in terms of influencing general British productivity by that point.

 

[Sad Sprinter]

I can’t imagine that the closure of suburban lines in Bristol, Birmingham and Manchester has done much to increase the poor GVA of Britains regional cities compared to its European counterparts.

 

[30907]

Leaving aside the railway's productivity, there are two possible areas to explore:

1. Did the closure of lines have a negative impact on productivity by preventing travel to work? I suspect the answer is "minimally" because the vast majority of actual closures had little commuter traffic (discounting scholars).

2. Did the absence of the former lines subsequently have that impact? I am less sure, but looking at those lines which have reopened (or are likely to reopen) I am not sure how you would argue that they have improved productivity - though I don't deny there are other benefits.

 

[Wolfie]

Leaving aside the railway's productivity, there are two possible areas to explore:

1. Did the closure of lines have a negative impact on productivity by preventing travel to work? I suspect the answer is "minimally" because the vast majority of actual closures had little commuter traffic (discounting scholars).

2. Did the absence of the former lines subsequently have that impact? I am less sure, but looking at those lines which have reopened (or are likely to reopen) I am not sure how you would argue that they have improved productivity - though I don't deny there are other benefits.

Re your point 2 the "unknown unknowns" come into play here. Would subsequent development have been different had rail options still been available?

To be very clear l am speculating and really have no clue what the answer to that question is.

 

[Dr Hoo]

I can’t imagine that the closure of suburban lines in Bristol, Birmingham and Manchester has done much to increase the poor GVA of Britains regional cities compared to its European counterparts.

I think that you're going to have to be a bit more specific about which (Beeching) closures you have in mind for these cities. For example, the Portishead line in Bristol was apparently down to around 160 passengers per weekday in the early 1960s. Presumably the equivalent of around 80 regular commuters - not even two buses-full. Not much in the context of a city the size of Bristol. The service reduction to peak only had been instigated before Beeching took over.

Do you have any comparative figures for GVA between a selection of British regional cities and some European counterparts from (say) 1950-2020 to flesh out your thesis?

 

[Doctor Fegg]

I don’t think there can be any doubt that traffic sitting in a queue on the A40 between Witney and Oxford for one hour plus, rather than a 20-minute train ride, is good for productivity. Conversely a slow train between Carmarthen and Aberystwyth carrying very few passengers was probably not classically “productive”. It depends which lines you select and over what timeframe.

 

[Magdalia]

Just thinking of all the lines, especially in urban areas that closed, that might have held back conurbations outside the South East. Or the other medium sized towns that lost their rail service. Could Beeching have contributed to Britain’s low productivity at all?

For the railway, Beeching definitely increased productivity. Most of the bits that were junked were the lowest productivity parts of the operation, most of the bits that were retained were the highest productivity parts of the operation.

Do you have any comparative figures for GVA between a selection of British regional cities and some European counterparts from (say) 1950-2020 to flesh out your thesis?

Eurostat publish data, on a consistent basis, for regional gross value added (GVA) in European Union countries. Before Brexit that included the UK. I don't know how easy it is to do a comparison now.

I haven't looked at the numbers for a long time, but, in the UK, GVA growth is very unevenly spread, with London, the South East and the East doing better than other parts of the UK. London is very dominant in the UK economy, the only other EU country with similar dominance of one city is France.

But I think it would be hard to demonstrate a causal link between Beeching and the poor growth in UK regions outside London, the South East and the East. At the time of Beeching the big cities of the Midlands and North got their prosperity mainly from manufacturing industry. It was the failure of UK manufacturing industry to remain internationally competitive that knocked a hole in the prosperity of the big cities of the Midlands and North, and that's probably more to do with lack of investment in the businesses themselves than it is to do with transport policy. Some of the big industrial cities had large amounts of investment in road infrastructure, for example Birmingham and Manchester.

 

[Springs Branch]

Irrespective of its effect on Britain's productivity, I understand that the flood of scrap metal from redundant steam locos, permanent way and rolling stock post-Beeching had a noticeable effect on market prices in the iron & steel industry (no figures to present, just something I once read).

 

[jon0844]

I think at some point we need to accept that the changes to the railway were likely considered logical and sensible at the time, given the motor car was giving people more freedom (despite the impact of subsequent developments making people totally car dependent) and transport operators would have thought that more buses and coaches meant being able to run anywhere with ease (ignoring traffic congestion issues and the ongoing cost of trying to run buses over trains).

Hindsight shows that it was bad for all of us, but we know that now.

What's more worrying is that if this current Government gets voted back in for another term, it seems the current leadership would very much like to scale back our railways and invest more in roads. By reducing timetables a lot of capacity upgrades could be shelved, and if the Government really wants to get into bed with the oil companies then why not scale back electrification even more - and why bother with battery train development if you could just keep using diesel trains for another xx years.

I would hope that there's going to be enough push back on this to stop that happening, but while on an arguable smaller scale, the question has to be whether we really could be allowing another Beeching to happen.

 

[swt_passenger]

I don’t think there can be any doubt that traffic sitting in a queue on the A40 between Witney and Oxford for one hour plus, rather than a 20-minute train ride, is good for productivity...

Should that have been “not good” for productivity?

 

[ac6000cw]

But I think it would be hard to demonstrate a causal link between Beeching and the poor growth in UK regions outside London, the South East and the East. At the time of Beeching the big cities of the Midlands and North got their prosperity mainly from manufacturing industry. It was the failure of UK manufacturing industry to remain internationally competitive that knocked a hole in the prosperity of the big cities of the Midlands and North, and that's probably more to do with lack of investment in the businesses themselves than it is to do with transport policy. Some of the big industrial cities had large amounts of investment in road infrastructure, for example Birmingham and Manchester.

(My bold) I agree with all of that, being someone who grew up in the early 1960's in the industrial West Midlands - particularly the 'lack of investment' part. The virtual extinction of the British motorcycle industry by the late 1970s is almost a textbook example of how to throw away an industry. In those sort of industrial areas, factories and housing were often closely interspersed and most people got to/from work by walking, cycling or catching a bus as the distances were often fairly short.

In 1952 (well before the passenger rail system got seriously pruned back) buses handled 42% of total passenger km, rail 17%, 30% car/van/taxi (source is historical transport statistics for the period between 1952 and 2016 on the BBC website - https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-42182497 ). I suspect that if you took out the Southeast commuter rail traffic into Central London (a market which the railways largely created and which never really existed on anything like that scale elsewhere in the UK) and the long-distance rail traffic, the percentage passenger km of rail commuting to work outside of the Southeast in 1952 would be very low, so any effect of the Beeching era cutbacks would be almost negligible in UK economic terms.

The standout statistic for me is the huge decline in bus/coach usage - from about 42% of total passenger km in 1952 to about 5% in 2016.
Private car passenger km went from less than 30% to about 85% by the late 1980s (and has stayed roughly constant since then, as has total car driven distance).
Rail passenger km went from 17% to 10%, with a low of about 5% in the mid-1990s (about when privatisation happened). Note that in 2016 it's 10% of a much larger 'pie', so actual rail passenger km in 2016 was about twice that of 1952.

Graph from BBC article:

 

[Bishopstone]

There is also the matter of opportunity cost. If the rail network had been left unchanged post-1963, it would have absorbed larger subsidies, meaning less cash for other projects (including non-transport expenditures) with knock-on productivity implications.

 

[The exile]

IIRC, one of the weaknesses of the Beeching review (and any closure inquiries that went with it) was that they could only take into account the current situation. No provision could be made for future developments - even ones already well down the pipeline (the example I remember being cited is Haverhill). Whether that would have made any difference in the car-obsessed 1960s is another matter - but it might have saved some lines that would undoubtedly have helped with productivity in the intervening years.

 

[ac6000cw]

IIRC, one of the weaknesses of the Beeching review (and any closure inquiries that went with it) was that they could only take into account the current situation. No provision could be made for future developments - even ones already well down the pipeline (the example I remember being cited is Haverhill). Whether that would have made any difference in the car-obsessed 1960s is another matter - but it might have saved some lives that would undoubtedly have helped with productivity in the intervening years.

Average road deaths in the 1963 to 2016 period was around 5000 per year. The average UK population was around 60 million over the same period, so 5000 is less than 0.01% of the population - in economic terms insignificant I think.

There is also the matter of opportunity cost. If the rail network had been left unchanged post-1963, it would have absorbed larger subsidies, meaning less cash for other projects (including non-transport expenditures) with knock-on productivity implications.

I wonder if a really hard line had been taken on the economics of the rail system in 1963, so that only a system that fully paid its way (i.e. the revenue covered all the operating and maintenance costs) had survived, and the financial support since then that's been pumped into the railways had instead been spent on education and supporting new and growing industries, would the overall economy be in better shape today?

 

[The exile]

Average road deaths in the 1963 to 2016 period was around 5000 per year. The average UK population was around 60 million over the same period, so 5000 is less than 0.01% of the population - in economic terms insignificant I think.

Typo - should have read “lines”!

 

[30907]

I don’t think there can be any doubt that traffic sitting in a queue on the A40 between Witney and Oxford for one hour plus, rather than a 20-minute train ride, is good for productivity.

It is unproductive time, certainly. The question is, would reducing the commuting time increase actual production (of whatever) - or would it be used non-productively in the pub/on the sofa? Or as is certainly the case, in extending the distance commuted?

 

[deltic]

There have been many studies comparing productivity in major cities in the UK with comparable sized cities in Europe and demonstrating one reason for their poor performance is the lack of fast public transport. This is evidenced by how many people can access employment within a given time usually 30-45 minutes. Since Beeching's time we have moved into a service based economy with a higher proportion of jobs located in city centres which are best accessed by public transport. The ability to access those jobs has been constrained by increasing traffic congestion and lack of segregated access which can be provided by rail, trams or dedicated busways. There has been some excellent analysis undertaken by Tom Forth showing how central Birmingham's labour catchment area has shrunk over time due to increasing delays to bus services.

So the loss of some rail lines has definitely had an impact on present productivity but less so those in rural areas.

== Doublepost prevention - post automatically merged: 26 Oct 2023 ==

It is unproductive time, certainly. The question is, would reducing the commuting time increase actual production (of whatever) - or would it be used non-productively in the pub/on the sofa? Or as is certainly the case, in extending the distance commuted?

It increases the labour catchment area which means employers have a better choice of workers which leads to higher productivity

 

[stuu]

It is unproductive time, certainly. The question is, would reducing the commuting time increase actual production (of whatever) - or would it be used non-productively in the pub/on the sofa? Or as is certainly the case, in extending the distance commuted?

It also means all the freight and other traffic is stuck in the same queue, which definitely does lower productivity

 

[Magdalia]

Since Beeching's time we have moved into a service based economy with a higher proportion of jobs located in city centres which are best accessed by public transport.

But that happened quite a long time (20 years?) after Beeching. Could he have been expected to foresee that?

No provision could be made for future developments - even ones already well down the pipeline (the example I remember being cited is Haverhill).

When Haverhill first expanded it was a "London Overspill" town. Employment was local and industrial. 50 years ago, when I was growing up, Haverhill and St Neots were regarded as similar. Haverhill lost its trains in 1967, while St Neots was on the ECML and retained a sparse local service. Hardly anyone from St Neots commuted, and the 0810 Sandy-Kings Cross was only extended back to start from Huntingdon in 1972. Like a lot of places, St Neots became "commuter belt" in the 1980s, supercharged by electrification. Haverhill only had driving to Audley End, which was Saffron Walden Parkway before parkways were invented. Look at the difference between St Neots and Haverhill now.

There have been many studies comparing productivity in major cities in the UK with comparable sized cities in Europe and demonstrating one reason for their poor performance is the lack of fast public transport. This is evidenced by how many people can access employment within a given time usually 30-45 minutes. Since Beeching's time we have moved into a service based economy with a higher proportion of jobs located in city centres which are best accessed by public transport. The ability to access those jobs has been constrained by increasing traffic congestion and lack of segregated access which can be provided by rail, trams or dedicated busways.

The economy of Cambridge is expanding rapidly and already being constrained in this way. One notable feature of Cambridge is the migration of the high productivity employment to be close to the railway. The old city centre now only has the low productivity retail, tourism and hospitality.

== Doublepost prevention - post automatically merged: 26 Oct 2023 ==

Average road deaths in the 1963 to 2016 period was around 5000 per year.

Peace time road deaths peaked at nearly 8000 in 1966 and have been on a downward trend ever since, started by the introduction of the breathalyser in 1967. Road deaths have been below 2000 in every year since 2010.

In the early 1960s road deaths used to be very high at Bank Holiday weekends, and the numbers would be reported in the newspapers.

 

[deltic]

But that happened quite a long time (20 years?) after Beeching. Could he have been expected to foresee that?

No but we could have protected the right of way as some other countries seem to do

 

[GRALISTAIR]

Just thinking of all the lines, especially in urban areas that closed, that might have held back conurbations outside the South East. Or the other medium sized towns that lost their rail service. Could Beeching have contributed to Britain’s low productivity at all?

No it boosted productivity considerably.

I should imagine it improved productivity considerably.

Indeed.

 

[Taunton]

Irrespective of its effect on Britain's productivity, I understand that the flood of scrap metal from redundant steam locos, permanent way and rolling stock post-Beeching had a noticeable effect on market prices in the iron & steel industry (no figures to present, just something I once read).

But curiously this was also just when there was also considerable investment by the railway in new, Beeching-style high-productivity flows of iron ore to the steelworks, Port Talbot to Llanwern, Hunterston to Ravenscraig, etc

 

[Magdalia]

But curiously this was also just when there was also considerable investment by the railway in new, Beeching-style high-productivity flows of iron ore to the steelworks, Port Talbot to Llanwern, Hunterston to Ravenscraig, etc

The big switch from domestic low grade ore to imported higher grade ore didn't come until the early 1970s. On this side of the land that was through Immingham and Redcar.

 

[Dr Hoo]

I don’t think there can be any doubt that traffic sitting in a queue on the A40 between Witney and Oxford for one hour plus, rather than a 20-minute train ride, is good for productivity. Conversely a slow train between Carmarthen and Aberystwyth carrying very few passengers was probably not classically “productive”. It depends which lines you select and over what timeframe.

Witney wasn't really a Beeching/Re-shaping Plan closure. It was already in the Western Region 'pipeline' when Beeching was appointed (and closed on 18 June 1962, I believe).

I didn't think that the Fairford/Witney branch was seen as an Oxford 'commuter' route. Ironically Cheltenham-Andoversford-Witney-Oxford buses were advertised for connections with Oxford-London trains, with through road-rail ticketing as far back as at least the mid-1950s. The writing had been on the wall for a long time.

 

[ac6000cw]

But curiously this was also just when there was also considerable investment by the railway in new, Beeching-style high-productivity flows of iron ore to the steelworks, Port Talbot to Llanwern, Hunterston to Ravenscraig, etc

From what I remember at the time, (nationalised) British Steel paid for the large fleet (around 450) of new rotary-tippler compatible rolling stock and the terminal equipment, so how much did BR itself invest?

It appeared to be basically a hook-and-haul operation for BR, originally using existing cl. 37s in pairs and triples.

Peace time road deaths peaked at nearly 8000 in 1966 and have been on a downward trend ever since, started by the introduction of the breathalyser in 1967. Road deaths have been below 2000 in every year since 2010.

Yes, I know - a graph of that data was in the BBC article I linked in post #14 - I just picked the approximate median value to do a simple calculation. As the car passenger km over that period tripled and road fatalities decreased by a factor of four, it was a huge improvement in that aspect of road safety over the 1966 - 2016 period.

 

[Mcr Warrior]

Peace time road deaths peaked at nearly 8000 in 1966 and have been on a downward trend ever since, started by the introduction of the breathalyser in 1967. Road deaths have been below 2000 in every year since 2010.

In the early 1960s road deaths used to be very high at Bank Holiday weekends, and the numbers would be reported in the newspapers.

When did new motor vehicles in the UK routinely start to have seat belts fitted? I'm aware that their use (where fitted) wasn't, initially, compulsory, that came a bit later.

 

[gg1]

When did new motor vehicles in the UK routinely start to have seat belts fitted? I'm aware that their use (where fitted) wasn't, initially, compulsory, that came a bit later.

They became a legal requirement on new cars is 1965, so contemporaneous with the introduction of breathalysers mentioned earlier and the 70mph speed limit (until then there was no speed limit on motorways).