Restricted future for lorries?
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• "The time has come for all in road transport to realize that the lorry will in future not be allowed to roam where it wants," Mr Leslie Huckfield, MP for Nuneaton, told the Transport Manager's Club in London on Wednesday.
Speaking at the TMC's dinner, Mr Huckfield said that to assume that one just paid one's road fund licence and then had all Britain's roads at one's disposal would become a thing of the past.
This would mean less flexibility for road transport, and the lorry driver's skill in finding the shortest and best route would have to be replaced by a knowledge of the restrictions, the designated routes and the bans which confronted him. "How they will enforce this, goodness only knows." he added.
This situation would, said Mr Huckfield, develop either under the Heavy Commercial Vehicles (Control and Regulations) Bill or other central or local measures. And hauliers would not find the Tory Party defending them this time, said Mr Huckfield; road transport and the lorry now had few political friends.
The Standing Committee on the above Bill was told this week, in a briefing note, of some of the problems and dangers which would arise from too-rigid and too-widespread restrictions on road transport. The note, prepared by the FTA, stressed that in the Association's view, the right of reasonable access was one which should be preserved by Parliament.
To emphasize that a distinction could successfully be drawn between access and through traffic, the FTA revealed that last week it had contacted nine city authorities where separate access /through traffic schemes were operating and found that the authorities were unanimous in declaring them successful.