General Survey
The control of traffic takes the form of licensing and
registration Licensing may be according to routes or
according to vehicles The control exercised takes the
shape of regulations with regard to speed, hours of work,
fares charged and routes operated. An additional method
of check that is sought to be introduced in India is
insurance to cover third-party risks. The organisation of
control should be vested in the hands of District and
Provincial Transport Committees which would strive to
restrict unnecessary duplication of services and to ensure
a high level of efficiency. This would be possible by
restricting the grant of licences for road operation In the
exercise of control, the three guiding maxims should be
those of public need, priority of service, and protection of
rival interests. Permission to operate services should be
given only when the traffic catered for is new and when the
prospective applicant does not, by so doing, compete with
existing concerns. Finally, the licensed operator should be
one who has had a clean service-record.
Monopolisation of services is a suggested method of
control, since it would weed out the inefficient and make
for larger expenditure on a well directed and planned
scheme But if the mat-effects of monopolisation are to be
guarded against, it should be vested in a public body which
would avowedly govern it on broad principles of public
utility. But the drive for efficiency and the zeal for
reform, peculiarly characteristic of a competitive system,
are likely to be absent under a monopoly.
The sovereign end in view should be the effective
co-ordination of the road and rail services. A central
co-ordinating authority should be able to judge their
respective spheres of operation and plan the transport
system along well directed lines. Such co-ordination could
be either voluntary or statutory. The basis of all such
measures should rest upon the great realisation that each
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