Before mass motorisation - Transport Policy and Planning in Great Britain - page 65

markets. To these river improvements the construction of artificial waterways, i.e.
canals, was a logical extension.
After the opening of the commercially successful Bridgwater Canal near Manchester
in 1761 a rash of canal projects followed. Eventually these linked the Mersey, Trent,
Severn and Thames and brought the benefits of cheap waterborne access to the rapidly
industrialising towns of the Midlands. Local land owners and entrepreneurs who stood to
gain from canal projects mostly took the initiative in promoting and raising the necessary
capital, although there was a period of more widespread investment 'mania' in the early
1790s. A legacy from the system of local promotion was the different dimensions to
which the canals and locks were built. This plus continued fragmented ownership and
the absence of a central 'clearing house' system to facilitate the through conveyance of
goods meant that Britain's canal network as a whole was never developed to challenge
the railway as a bulk freight carrier.
With the growth of industry and internal trade in the second half of the 18th century
the inherent deficiencies of the parish-based system of highway maintenance became
highlighted. There was no incentive for local communities to invest in improvements
which would primarily benefit longer distance travellers passing through. This problem
was overcome by the creation of turnpike trusts - again often funded by local merchants
or manufacturers who stood to gain from road improvement. By individual Acts of
Parliament, authority was vested in a body of trustees to raise money for improvement
works, to place gates across the road, and to charge tolls to road users for their
passage. Such 'improvements' were often controversial and in places engendered riots.
(Opposition to road user charging is nothing new!) By the beginning of the railway age
in the 1830s there were some 1,100 turnpike trusts each administering about 20 miles of
road on average and just over one-fifth of the country's road network in all.
The opportunity to recoup the cost of highway improvements facilitated a more
serious and scientific approach to the construction of roads which in turn made possible
very much greater continuous speeds. Passenger travel and the conveyance of mail over
land was revolutionised with the rapid growth of the stagecoach network. Journeys
measured in days in the 1750s were completed in hours in the early 1800s. Nevertheless
travel by stagecoach - the forerunner of today's express coach - only appealed to the
middle market. Richer people avoided the ignominy of public transport by using their
own carriages and hiring post horses. Poorer people travelled more slowly and cheaply
on wagons or by coastal shipping.
4.3 The development of the railway network
In their early years of development Britain's railways began similarly to the canals,
with local companies securing Acts of Parliament to construct relatively short sections
of line serving particular needs. Trunk routes, such as the London to Birmingham or
the Great Western from London to Bristol were the exception. Even where railways
joined, through-conveyance of goods was difficult until a clearing-house system was
established in the 1840s which allowed for the apportionment of receipts between
different companies.
In the middle of the 19th century Parliament was dedicated to the idea that consumers'
interests were best served by competition, even though criticisms were voiced then
and since about the waste of resources that this implied. Competition centred initially
on winning sufficient backers to gain Parliamentary approval to construct a line, and
then the private investment to fund it. Later, competition moved to the provision of