ilore or less damage row on Armitage
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ARMITAGE Report will have to be implemented as a complete kage, over and above the existing roads budget, according to Association of County Councils.
a report released last week, I ACC claimed that over Om will have to be spent on pngthening road bridges to oil with the effects of heavier
nd it claims that new eviice of the risks to bridges, hered by ACC advisers, the .1nty Surveyors' Society, and Department of Transport's lineers, has come to light ce the Armitage Report was blished last year, recom!riding an increase in gross -Ode weights.
In calling for the implementation of the report as a package on top of existing expenditure, ACC planning and transportation committee chairman Arnold Sayers said: "This additional figure of £1 0 Om was not previously allowed for and not included in the original Inquiry report.
"It must be taken into account now if the Armitage proposals are to go ahead as a package with the full standards of the environment."
And he went on to say that the £100m could, in fact, be spread over a five-year period, and could be dealt with through the Transport Supplementary Grant system, if the Government goes ahead with a plan for heavier lorries.
A Freight Transport Association spokesman commented this week that the Armitage Report, in fact, suggested that a ten per cent reduction in road damage would occur if there was a move to the EEC's proposed heavier lorries. As neither the EEC nor Armitage has stuck to those weight combinations, and have gone for something less, the savings should be greater.
He also suggested that the £100m figure, which worked out at £20m by the ACC's own admission, was "pennies and ha'pennies" compared with the benefits of heavier lorries, and said that such a small investment would bring in much greater benefits.
And he pointed out that Armitage said that the introduction of heavier lorries would reduce public expenditure on roads by up to £17m a year.
The ACC, meanwhile, is to press the DTp for substantial new capital funds to bear what it claims is the cost of implementing the Armitage Report.