AT THE HEART OF THE ROAD TRANSPORT INDUSTRY.

Call our Sales Team on 0208 912 2120

'Feeding the demand for road transport is simply bad economics'

24th April 1997, Page 55
24th April 1997
Page 55
Page 55, 24th April 1997 — 'Feeding the demand for road transport is simply bad economics'
Close
Noticed an error?
If you've noticed an error in this article please click here to report it so we can fix it.

Which of the following most accurately describes the problem?

The age of road building in the developed world has come to an end. This termination brings a large number of opportunities and recognises the economic, environmental and social damage caused by a commitment to a rising spiral of traffic and road space. The growth in demand For passenger and freight transport over the past 40 years is a function of significant underpricing of transport and of the pursuit of large-scale production, necessitating longer journeys for road freight.

Both these factors can be changed and in doing so will produce more local employment and less road transport. To throw large amounts of public funds at road building in an attempt to support even longer trips or more complicated journey patterns is to create an environmentally and economically inefficient solution. Feeding the demand for road transport is simply bad economics and is the direct equivalent of building more power stations rather than implementing an energy programme. We all accept energy conservation, so why not transport conservation? The health impact of road transport is a serious cause for concern with clear World Health

Organisation (WHO) statements on the health-damaging impacts of air and noise pollution from traffic, and numerous scientific papers in international journals showing that the respiratory health of children is damage by vehicle pollution.

The growth in numbers of vehicles and the miles they drive more than compensates for the improved technological efficiency of the catalytic converter. The social impact of traffic is dramatic. Researchers at the Policy Studies Institute in London have shown how traffic is the main cause of dramatic loss of child freedom and mobility in the journey to school and in leisure lourneys. Children have been deprived of freedoms so that adults can drive one person in one car for journeys as short as one mile. This deprivation of child freedoms burdens adults by time, and burdens the roads with congestion and pollution. The costs of supplying road space and all the apparatus of a transport system dedicated to roads is a drain on the national economy. In the UK the external costs of road transport are estimated to be £45.9-52.9bn. Reductions in the size of this bill would permit reallocation of scarce resources to a number of other budget headings that would stimulate employment and environmental standards.

We would all be winners. The UK road transport industry is an efficient industry and one with considerable entrepreneurial flair. It has the potential to go-ow and develop in ways that would broaden its range of activities and reduce its dependence on one mode of transport. Moving and storing goods, organising urban freight distribution centres, linking producers and consumers, reducing the movement of goods over long distances by stimulating the provision of alternative inearer) sources, developing water transport and coastal shipping all require the skills of the road Freight industry. The end of road building provides a new operating environment that will enable the creative company to be far more successful than in the past and it will eliminate the inefficient and those who have survived in the past simply by cost cutting and the erosion of standards.

• If you want to sound off about a road transport issue write to features editor Patric Cunnane or fax your views (up to 600 words) on 0181 652 8912.


comments powered by Disqus