• Call for Snow Clearance Speed Urgent Traffic
Page 20
If you've noticed an error in this article please click here to report it so we can fix it.
('TARING instances of the lack of N–lladequate provision' to clear snow quickly from our roads so as to prevent delays to vital war-time transport were quoted to our Yorkshire correspondent by Councillor Charles Holdsworth, of Halifax, a member of the Government's Road Haulage (Operations) .Advisory Committee and chairman of ' the C.M.U.A.'s North-eastern Division.
" In view of the extreme pressure on haulage facilities, accentuated by the shortage of vehicles, and bearing in mind the urgent character of much of the traffic, it is a public scandal that vehicles should be held up for days, snowbound," he commented. " The • effect which hold-ups in bitter weather • have on the health of drivers is in itself a serious matter."
His answer to the excuse that not enough men, ploughs and vehicles to • push them were available was thit
road-transport operators themselves
• would be glad to provide vehicles and crews to man them, and 'that emergency .ploughs could be made in any blacksmith's shop, from scrap plating 'or such material, " Wouldn't it be better," 'asked Mr. • Holdsworth, " to set aside 20 vehieles _ for working snowploughs on Shap Fell than to have hundreds of lorries—many carrying 'urgent loads—held up there day after day by Snow?"
Referring to the fact that, as we have • previously reported, the North-eastern Division of the C.M.U.A. recently put forward Suggestions' for dealing with the snoW-clearance problem, Mr. Holdsworth 'said:' " We have been hammering at. this question for two years, yet there is still an appalling amount of national waste through
• transport delays -caused by lack of efficient snow clearance,"