logers'sad farewell
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IE NEGATIVE attitude of environmentalists who oppose the conruction of new roads in London contrasts sharply with the "conructive environmentalism" of the Road Haulage Association, RHA Mona! chairman Ken Rogers said this week.
Speaking at the RHA's annual nities can largely be eliminated nner just before he was due to by building new roads.
3nd down after two years as rtional chairman, Mr Rogers id he was saddened by a owing tendency among the rresponsible fringe of the soWed green alliance" to omote the publication of the .mitage Report, the Governent White Paper on lorries, ?ople, and the environment, e Transport Bill, and local govnment's anti-haulage policies. "As became clear from the r-yf expensive, useless and merless Wood Inquiry into rry bans in London, it is the )ry same people who objected new road building in London ho now complain about the )nflict between traffic and ;ople which is the direct result
that earlier ostrich-like attide," he went on.
"The negative outlook lopted by such protesters is in mtrast to the constructive envi)nmentalism which we .omote. Our welcome for modSri, more efficient lorries which .e more productive in terms of lel they use is true conserveDn, whereas the obsession with le past and attempts to loehorn a modern industrial ty into a Victorian infrastrucire is not conservationism at I," Mr Rogers added.
He went on to say he was aswished to find that few people ccept that the problems created etween traffic and commu "It is simply no use saying that traffic is unacceptable and seeking to prohibit it, because this has the simple consequence of so interfering with the operation of the local economy that over a period the economy expires," he said.
In welcoming Junior Transport Ministers Lynda Chalker and Reginald Eyre to the transport world, Mr Rogers said he hoped the advent of a second junior minister would lead to a greater output of new road schemes. Turning to other industry affairs, he described last winter's wage negotiations as a victory for common sense, and commented: "The responsible attitude and restraint shown by negotiators will now guarantee more businesses and jobs which would not have seen next Christmas had the common sense approach not prevailed."
But he warned that a change, as the Transport and General Workers' Union is considering, to a two-stage wage negotiating pattern would be unhelpful. Describing it as a means of having "two bites at the wages cherry," Mr Rogers added: "Such a proposal seems to me to have been a brainchild conceived in the now familiar cloud cuckoo land."