No population explosion for lorries by Janus

18th September 1970, Page 288

18th September 1970

Page 288

Page 288, 18th September 1970 — No population explosion for lorries by Janus

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MORE and more frequently, when the planners turn their attention to transport, they come up with the idea that conurbation traffic problems would be greatly eased by the banning of heavy goods vehicles in the centre of towns, or even completely in some large towns. The architects are particularly forceful on this point. Perhaps they see the heavy vehicle, or indeed any vehicle, as an intrusion on the well-designed city, something that should so far as possible be kept out.

The Royal Institute of British Architects has strongly criticized the Greater London Development Plan, and has put forward several proposals of its own. Except for the provision of clearways and lanes for buses only a remarkable proportion of the suggestions are intended in one way or another to restrict the use of the roads.

Improved Underground services, more flats for office staff in central London and free parking away from that area would generally be welcomed. The RIBA goes further. It wants to price roads at 5s a mile travelled and to restrict commuter cars further by the issue of a limited number of special parking permits. And, of course, the banning of heavy goods vehicles in London is advocated.

“ HERE is no reason why vehicles of all sizes should have unlimited access," says the RIBA. With this opinion there would be general agreement. Already the heavy lorry is banned from a limited area of central London, and there are restrictions, growing in severity, on parking and on loading or unloading. A general prohibition would be a different matter.

In spite of its impracticability, the move would be popular. Operators in London—which seems to be the target area for this kind of exercise—or coming into London ought to take the threat seriously and try to draw up a balance sheet for trade and industry. If the proposed ban were ever applied, hauliers, much less traders on own-account, would hardly be put out of business. The extra cost would have to be put on mad haulage rates and on prices. All the same, it is only right that the public should realize what is entailed.

DELIVERY of a 16-ton consignment from a factory to a destination in central London can most economically be made by a single vehicle. H' it has to stop on the outskirts of town and transfer the load to two or more smaller vehicles, the expense will be considerably greater, apart from a possible security risk. The smaller vehicles in aggregate will take up more space and require more drivers and other staff. Far from reducing congestion, they may even aggravate it.

There are some vehicles, such as the road tanker and the carrier of the abnormal indivisible load, where transhipment is hardly possible. Exceptions would have to be made to any attempt to impose a ban. The task of enforcement would thereby be increased. It would be made equally difficult in any attempt to discriminate between through traffic and traffic for delivers' in the protected area.

The Greater London plan ought to help in this respect. Its ring roads are intended to filter the through traffic so that the centre of London becomes almost a reservation. Ingenious traffic engineering could co-operate by ensuring that vehicles which enter would be virtually compelled to go out by the same route. Discouragement of transit except by the ring road would be much more effective than a vain attempt to sort the traffic out at the point of entry, much less an undifferentiated ban.

HEN the economic defence of the lorry is urged, the standard reply is to point to something vaguely known as social cost. It is said that a lorry travelling into central London, even when its errand lies in that direction, is causing delay and therefore loss to an indefinite number of other road users, is breaking up the surface of the road to a disproportionate extent, is creating anguish and illness by its noise and fumes, and so on.

Calculations based on these insubstantial accusations ought to suffer from the disadvantage of a lack of precision. The economists unfriendly to the lorry are not perturbed. They are prepared to put a figure on the public loss, all the more confidently in view of the fact that the figure cannot be refuted. The arguments thus generated tend to finish in a cloud of statistics. They may still leave their mark with the casual reader, who too easily gets the impression that, even while he is sitting in a queue of other cars, lorries are proliferating all around him.

For such a person, if he ever came across them, the latest reports of the Licensing Authorities ought to bring reassurance. They cover what seems now a remote period from October 1968 to the end of September 1969. That is to say, they stop short just at the moment when the switch to operators' licensing was beginning.

ON THE other hand, the tables at the end of the reports were compiled after the exclusion from carriers' licensing of vehicles not weighing more than 30cwt unladen—slightly incorrectly described in the reports as "vehicles under 11, tons unladen weight". When the small goods vehicles are thus eliminated, all that are left are 215,000 vehicles on A, Contract A and B licence, and 398,000 on C licence, a total of 613,000. .

The figure is no greater, if at all, than the corresponding total five years ago. There may have been an increase of perhaps 20 per cent over the past decade. It is true that the tendency is towards a more rapid growth at the heavy end of the spectrum, but the enemies of the lorry would find it difficult to argue on the basis of the available figures that the menace is becoming significantly worse.

THE rate of increase of commercial ' vehicles in general has been remarkably slow since the war. if an exception is made of the C-licence explosion shortly afterwards, popularly attributed to the harmful early effects of the nationalization of transport. The leisurely growth went side by side with the carriers' licensing system and the temptation is to assume that one is the cause of the other.

It may not be easy to prove the point one way or another. The small goods vehicle has now been exempt from licensing for over a year, so that it no longer finds a place in the Licensing Authorities' reports. Large goods vehicles with a plated weight of more than 16 tons are still controlled by carriers' licensing and will be shown thus in the reports published 12 months hence whatever the Government may do in the meantime to abolish the system.

FOR vehicles that are neither large nor small only an operator's licence is required. Any significant change in their number may be due to any number of reasons apart from the simple switch from a system based mainly on the state of the market to one in which merit or the promise of merit is the sole consideration.

A substantial increase, however, may be interpreted as an indication that the new freedom will ultimately mean many more lorries on the roads. This would hardly please the planners, who would like to see far fewer. It is possible, however, that they would not even notice the figures. On other evidence they seem to be convinced that the menace of the lorry has already grown too great and that some means other than licensing must be found to discourage it.