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Ministry Favours Charging Goods Vehicles

10th April 1964, Page 32
10th April 1964
Page 32
Page 32, 10th April 1964 — Ministry Favours Charging Goods Vehicles
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Which of the following most accurately describes the problem?

BY A SPECIAL CORRESPONDENT

PROMINENT on the agenda of the highways and vehicles committee meeting of the Road Haulage Association to be held next Tuesday, April 14, is the question of chargeable meters, or some similar payment scheme, for commercial vehicles waiting in streets adjacent to wharves and docks. By Tuesday both the R.H.A. and the Traders Road Transport Association may have received the official statement of policy which the Ministry of Transport is due to provide on this subject, but already the signs are that it will come down firmly in favour of charging vehicles for waiting in this type of street.

Last week the vice-chairman of the R.H.A. highways and vehicles committee reported to the executive committee that the latest meeting with the Ministry (made in company with a representative from the T.R.T.A.) had made it clear that the Ministry was keen to impose commercial vehicle parking charges in Upper Thames Street, London, where for the first time a "wharf service street" comes within a local authority parking meter scheme. This is the City of London No. 4 Parking Meter Scheme, c4 At Bristol, too, where strong T.R.T.A. and R.H.A. objections led to a goodsvehicle meter .scheme being withdrawn by the Corporation's highways committee, the Minister may also ask for the pay-. ment plan to be reinstated.

Obviously the Minister's policy, as revealed in his decisions on these two areas, will be applied nationally.

The T.R.T.A. and R.H.A. have repeatedly made it clear (and I had this stressed to me again this week) that they are utterly opposed to goods vehicles paying for legitimate and often unavoidable waiting to load or unload at points adjacent to docks or wharves; this idle time is often out of their control, and to charge commercial vehicles is, they assert, cutting across the Buchanan principle that essential vehicles should get every encouragement.

Although both associations are probably reluctant to make open attacks upon the Government in election year their protests against any charging proposals are likely to be very strong indeed. Both bodies feel that waiting space should certainly be provided to meet the particular cases concerned—but free.


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