STRATEGY, WHAT STRATEGY?
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STRATEGY: "A plan for gaining an advantage." Hands up everyone who thinks the Government has one for road transport?
We only ask because this week two news items remind us that it doesn't.
The first involves British Rail, which is planning to pull out of the loss-making DoverDunkirk rail ferry so that the cargo currently carried on the cross-Channel route can be switched to the Chunnel. Well that makes sense; why put it on a ferry when you can run it through a tunnel? The thing is, most of the 50,000 tonnes of hazardous cargo carried on the rail ferry every year would be banned from using the Chunnel. That's strategy for you. By now UK hazardous goods hauliers will be reaching for their calculators: "Let's see.. .50,000 tonnes divided by, let's say 24 tonnes per payload— that's 2,083 more loads for me." To mis quote the Heineken advert, "HazchemSchmazchem! Champagne!" But before anybody cracks open the bubbly we ought to balance that story with the other news of the week. It seems that the Government is about to abandon a large part of its £23bn roads programme and postpone many other projects as part of a "review' to be announced before the end of the month by Transport Secretary John MacGregor. Among the dozens of projects due for the chop are the M12 in East Anglia,the M65 in Lancashire and a number of Trans-pennine routes. That's a strategy? On the one hand we have a Government whose Whitehall officials believe that its present road-building policy,geared to ever-increasing demand, is no longer sustainable. On the other we have a Government which has devastated public transport and railfreight driving more and more vehicles every year onto an increasingly congested road network. At this point the two stories come together, because if BR's plans go through, the 2,083 extra lorries will end up running on a road network that's close to full capacity as it is. Given the delays operators already experience on the Ml, M6, M62 and M25, another 2,083 trucks will hardly ease the problem. Surely Commercial Motor isn't suggesting that more business for hauliers is bad news? Not likely. But truck operators can no longer assume that a Government that has been happy to sit back and let road transport carry 80% of all goods in Britain will continue to do so. And if the erstwhile champion of the "Great Car Economy" is about to change its mind apout, and even develop a strategy for, transport then who do you think will end up in the firing line of political expediency? Joe Soap Haulier, please take one step forward.