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MSA shops criticised
Page 8
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by Brian Weatherley Plans by Compass, owners of the Moto chain of motorway service areas, to create "superstores" at their sites would clog up "the bloodlines of the country" according to leading used truck dealer Malcolm Harrison.
Compass has already won permission from the government to operate two pilot schemes based at Reading and possibly Heston services on the M4. Chief executive Mike Bailey recently told The Daily Telegraph. "I want stores in every single Moto site we've got."
But Harrison insists: "Motorway services should be used by trucks to pull off and park. There are already enough trucks queuing on service area slip roads and the hard shoulder because they can't find a parking space in the service area because of the growing number of cars and foreign trucks.
"I'm very much against services being adapted into 'shopping malls'—they should be there to provide rest and fuel under the law. Motorways are the bloodlines of our country. We can't have people going into service areas simply to go shopping. We should say no to 'motorway superstores'."
However, a Moto spokesman says fears of major shopping complexes within MSAs are misplaced: The development of our MSAs to include small convenience food shopping facilities will not impact in any way on the space available for HGV parking. We will not be building 'malls'."
Instead, he says. Moto will "utilise existing retail space within the amenity buildings. The small-scale developments are not Intended to encourage drivers to make specific journeys to service areas, but to provide an additional topup shopping service to drivers already on the motorway."
Moto will monitor usage at its two trial sites, Including any additional demands on parking facilities, before deckling whether to extend It throughout Its network.
• Following complaints from UK operators about foreign HGVs parking for long periods free of charge at MSAs, Moto says: "We are aware of a few isolated incidents of foreign trucks parking for several days at a small number of our service areas. We are in negotiations with overseas transport companies to try to reach a solution to the problem.
"However, we are not able to extend HGV parking at any of our sites because the number of spaces is dictated by government regulations to which we are obliged to adhere," it says.