M25 will beat the bans
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TRANSPORT operators are prepared to accept an accessonly night and weekend lorry ban in London, provided the Greater London Council waits until the M25 is complete.
Freight Transport Association South-Eastern controller John Guttridge told CM after last week's GLC transport committee meeting that it would accept a ban on through lorry traffic once the M25 is ready, especially as this would be a largely self-enforcing ban.
But the industry is far from happy about the existing proposals, not least because they are still so imprecise as to make it impossible for transport operators or industry to take long term investment decisions.
A leading FTA member, Sainsbury's distribution director Len Payne said the proposals were ill-conceived, would cause 1,296 jobs to be put at risk, would cause traffic chaos, increase pollution, and diminish living standards in London.
Not only would the company's depots at Charlton and Elstree be put at risk, so would future developments by the supermarket chain, and he predicted that additional depots would be sited beyond the M25.
Movement for London, the British Road Federation's regional group, predicted 8,000 manufacturing, distribution and warehousing jobs would disappear "as soon as the ban is implemented."
The Road Haulage Association said global lorry bans are not the answer to London's lorry problems, and that there should be a programme of new road building and traffic management.
• Transport 2000, the environmental lobby group, says the Government should wait for the M25 opening before resuming its attempts to widen Archway Road (the Al) in North London. But it has described the harassment of former Archway inquiry inspector Sir Michael Giddings (CM, March 3) as intolerable.