Step up investment demands transport
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TEN MAJOR groups in British transport have called for an increase of at least 50 per cent in the Government's investment in transport projects. They say it will help create an industrial recovery, reports ALAN MILLAR.
In a pre-Budget message aimed at all of the Government, the National Freight Company, Road Haulage Association, Freight Transport Association, British Rail, the British Road Federation, Transport and General Workers Union, National Union of Railwaymen, Associated Society of Locomotive Engineers and Footplatemen, the Transport Salaried Staffs Association, and the Amalgamated Union of Engineering Workers have urged Transport Secretary Norman Fowler to raise investment from its current £1.2bn.
Pointing out that this figure is less than that being spent on transport in 1975, they state: "It is no understatement to say that the whole industry is deeply concerned at the decline in public investment in transport.
"We believe the transport industry is vital to Britain's industrial development, and that it is essential to restore the proportion of the nation's income devoted to transport to the levels of the mid-Seventies".
They say they are burying the differences between their individual interests to give road and rail transport the chance of developing to their maximum.
And the groups go on to warn that, if the Government fails to increase the level of transport investment, it will hinder the economic recovery which is the Government's goal. "We see action in this area not only as supportive of national recovery, but as a forerunner of it."
The ten groups have drawn Mr Fowler's attention to the extent to which British transport investment lags behind the rest of Western Europe, and say that a 50 or more per cent increase in investment would bring forward the trunk road programme and permit an early start to be made on railway electrification.
They have asked Mr Fowler to give the matters priority, and hope to have a "transport summit" meeting with him before long.
While the message steers clear of making any specific suggestions about the source of an increased transport fund, one of the signatories — the British Road Federation — has already gone on record as suggesting that tax from North Sea oil revenue might be channeled in that direction.