Productivity Change in Road Transport before and after Turnpiking, 1690-1840

Abstract

R esearch in recent decades on road transport before the railways has restored it to its rightful place as one of the principal modes of transport during the industrial revolution, and has provided much new information about its structure, its rapid growth, and its uses.2 However, the impact of change in road transport on its productivity has remained obscure. Attention has been focused almost exclusively on turnpikes, starting in I972 with Albert's use of the cost of carrying goods to demonstrate the direct effects of turnpike improvements.3 Pawson too, in I977, used the cost of goods transport, but also the speed of passenger transport, and other measures such as the shift from packhorses to waggons and the geographical diffusion of coach services.4 More recently, Szostak has argued that 'a modern system of transportation was necessary for the Industrial Revolution to occur in England'; that 'modern transportation' began when 'an extensive and reliable system which could move bulk goods at low cost or high-value goods at high speed came into existence'; that, as regards land transport, this 'required roads which could support wheeled traffic year-round such that a regular professional carrying system could develop'; and that turnpike improvements enabled this requirement to be met by the mid-eighteenth century.5 The two unresolved problems are to distinguish the effects of better roads from those of other changes and to quantify such effects, thereby determining whether the turnpikes were really as important as has been claimed. Few of the measures of the direct impact of turnpikes used by Albert and Pawson are wholly satisfactory. Carriers' charges, for example, were affected not only by better roads but by improvement in waggon horses and increased economies of scale. Provender prices were another major influence, as Albert recognized, but he did not systematically relate long-term changes in rates of carriage and provender prices in order to discount change in the latter.6 His comparison between rates of carriage on main roads and the more expensive carriage on lesser roads was affected by the greater likelihood of full loads on major roads, as he acknowledged.7 Similarly, the speed of

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