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Edinburgh £2 charge 'a tax on haulage'
Page 8
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A PROPOSED £2-per-day congestion charge planned for Edinburgh has been condemned as anew tax on haulage.
Phil Flanders, Scottish regional director of the Road Haulage Association, says the charge will do little, if anything, to reduce truck journeys through the city centre.
"Operators are servicing Edinburgh businesses and have to deliver and collect when required," he told the inquiry into the scheme. "The charge could be £100-aday and trucks would still come
in. The higher the cost, the bigger the adverse affect on Edinburgh's economy."
Charging is planned from 2006 and will apply from 7am 6.30pm in the city's inner cordon and from 7am 10am in the outer cordon.
Flanders warns that the impact on haulage will be particularly severe if alternative routes are closed or gridlocked, forcing trucks into the outer cordon. Transport Initiatives Edinburgh, a company set up by the City Council, which is proposing the scheme, says the road transport industry will benefit from
the charge because journey times will be reduced. But Flanders argues that the charge is too low to reduce the amount of car traffic sufficiently for operators to make meaningful time savings.
Murray Prentice, managing director of Aberdeen-based JBT Transport, which delivers and collects in Edinburgh on a daily basis, describes the charge as totally wrong.
"Car drivers have other options but if a customer demands goods, they have to be in by a certain time and usually before the shops have opened," he says.