RHA secretary slams lorry Bill
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• Few people know that 85 per cent of the nation's goods are carried by road and that they are carried by this means because consignors choose the most efficient and economic means of distribution.
This was said • last week by RHA secretary, Mr Eric Russell, when he was addressing the Association's mid-Cornwall members at their annual dinner.
If that fact alone were more generally known, continued Mr Russell, the controversy might develop more rationally and more helpfully. Hauliers might be spared the impractical but insistent demands that goods should go by rail.
This Heavy Commercial Vehicles (Controls and Regulations) Bill, had received a rapturous second reading in the House of Commons, but during the Committee stage it was found that when the popular principles of a Bill had to be translated into practical measures, rhetoric had to give way to reason. It was only during this process as MPs recast the Bill, wrestled with amendments and looked hopefully and, Mr Russell suspected, desperately to the Report stage for a solution to certain of their problems — it was only then that
some .of the realities of the transport situation began to dawn upon them.
They realized, said Mr Russell, that most rail transits began and ended in road movements in towns where congestion was greatest. They got to know that if rail carryings were increased by 50 per cent it would reduce road goods only by 2 per cent. They perceived that if goods were to be compulsorily trans-shipped from heavy goods vehicles to small vehicles, traffic congestion would be intensified and, moreover, the cost of goods would rise.