British hauliers face Euro squeeze
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• Britain's hauliers face being squeezed-out by their European competitors after 1992 unless this country improves its road network, delegates at the Road Haulage Association conference in Portugal were warned this week.
Poor roads from London to the North mean that companies in Bruges rather than Bradford could supply shops in the South East more cheaply, said Confederation of British Industry director-general John Banham.
Britain's current motorway network was rooted in our economic past, with links to the Midlands and Liverpool. What was needed, he told the RHA, were new motorways between the Channel Tunnel, Edinburgh and Cornwall.
In a jibe at Roads and Traffic Minister Peter Bottotnley, whose speech to the RHA the day before had promised better prospects for hauliers in a prospering economy, Banham warned that the country could "wake up with an enormous hangover" in 1992. "There is a belief that because we're doing well we'll always do well. British business is in great shape but we mustn't believe our own publicity."
Road congestion was costing 23,000 million a year — enough to build 1,600km (1,000 miles) of motorway. Britain's traffic density was twice that of Germany and three times that of France, yet this year the Government was opening no motorways.
Snarl-ups in London were getting worse, he said. Bottomley's claim the previous day that congestion in the capital was easing made "no sense", and traffic there now moved slower than in the days of the horse and cart.
The Government was not taking a strategic view. "If we wait for the Whitehall machine to do its thing nothing will happen," he said.
Freddie Plaskett, retiring RHA director-general, said he wanted to see a bi-partisan committee set up to look at strategic road planning. It would be made up of politicians from all parties and bodies like the RHA.
fl Laws forcing lorries entering the UK to be weighed are being considered by the Department of Transport — but progress is being slowed by lack of space at ports, Peter Bottomley said on Monday.
The Roads and Traffic Minister was addressing delegates on the first day of the Road Haulage Association conference in Portugal. He was replying to a question from Geoffrey Simms of RHA Eastern, who suggested that all foreign trucks should be given a "weight ticket" to prove they were within the law. This would cut time and red tape, he said.
RHA chairman Roy Bowles had warned earlier that if transport congestion was not solved now it could become a major election issue, costing industry and government dearly.