Noise onus is on industry says Peyton
Page 15
If you've noticed an error in this article please click here to report it so we can fix it.
• "The transport system should not be an intolerable nuisance, with noisy lorries shaking our buildings to bits. The role of Government should be to impress upon the vehicle manufacturing industry what it must do; not tell the public what it must endure."
Mr John Peyton, Minister for Transport Industries, said this when he opened the symposium on Transport Policy and the Distribution of Goods in the Common Market (see pages 24 and 25) in Leeds on Monday.
The Minister said that most people he met thought they had the answer to problems that baffled him and his advisers. It was commonly agreed that there were too many motor vehicles — belonging to other people; that other people and their goods should go by rail to a greater extent than they do; and that better roads were very necessary, but it would be a disgrace to build one near the critic's home.
Mr Peyton said the price we paid for the motor vehicle in terms of injuries, death and loss was brutal. A ready acceptance of that price was obscene, in his view.
Apropos the Common Market, the Minister said that we in Britain had abandoned the idea of quantity licensing as a bureaucratic nightmare. We looked instead to ever-higher standards of operating in a freely competitive market. We were looking to the route restrictions for heavy vehicles because of our concern for the environment, and he hoped that in Western Europe the historic fabric of buildings would be preserved from damage by motor traffic.