Single entry plan for Nine Elms market alarms hauliers
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• A strong attack has been made by the Road Haulage Association on the proposal to provide only one entrance for goods vehicles to the new Covent Garden market at Nine Elms.
"Even if the facilities as designed were capable of handling the large amount of road traffic generated by such a market," says the RHA in a letter to the Ministry of Agriculture, Fisheries and Food, "considerable difficulties will arise as soon as there is any hold-up either at the toll-gates or in the tunnel due to mechanical failure causing break-downs in the only entrance tunnel.
"Even at this late stage the whole position should be re-examined to see if some safeguards could not be built in to avoid the inevitable traffic confusion which could arise in this area due to some very slight mishap. There should be plans to use other entrances if only to overcome this contingency."
The letter, which has also been sent to. the Department of the Environment, the Greater London Council, the Lambeth Borough Council and the Covent Garden Market Tenants' Association, reviews the discussions with the Covent Garden market authority in which the agricultural hauliers group and the highways and traffic committee of the RHA have expressed the haulier's point of view.
It was felt from the outset "that the original siting of the market at Nine Elms in the centre of probably the most congested traffic crossing in the London area was not, traffic-wise, a sound decision.
"The approach to the site each day of up to 400 large vehicles bringing produce into the market and an estimated 1600 vehicles taking produce from the market each day could very easily cause a tailback from the market entrances on to roads where traffic was already locked solid so frequently around the Vauxhall Cross junction."
The detailed plans subsequently showed that all vehicles would enter by one entrance and would have to pass through toll-gates and then be siphoned through a tunnel under the railway which would permit only two lines of traffic, the tunnel having a sharp incline at each end.