F tells Armitage: tter roads, better life
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E T WAY of reducing the impact he lorry on the environment is to an improved road network.
Is the mainstay of the British id ederation's submission to the rki ge inquiry into lorries, people • th environment.
be Federation says that the two er ways in which the lorry's impact :he environment can be reduced is to iroe the vehicle or change the &rail split.
)ealing with these options, BRF says iroVing the lorry could be more exisive for operators and hence inioriary. Changing the modal split — oft-repeated plea by the environntal lobby — is not so easily done. ppers already choose the most noinical method of sending freight, I the present split is a reflection of 'se 6hoices.
kl• tbi.s leaves an improvement in the .d System as the best option. BRF nts to motorways as playing an )ortant part in taking lorries away m routes through towns and other -suiable roads. As an example, it nt' ns the 50-mile motorway and ;11tandard dual carriageway route from Glasgow to Plymouth made up of the M74, A74, M6, M5, and A38 which bypasses more than 250 cities, towns and villages.
"Every one of these communities now reaps the benefits of not having to endure the thunder of heavy through traffic," BRF says.
But motorway and trunk-road building has been too slow says the BRF, and the series of road-spending cutbacks in the 1970s means that many areas will have to wait much longer for relief from traffic.
Furthermore, the future for road building does not seem too rosy. Comments the BRF: "The present Government appears no more enthusiastic. The latest cuts contained in the expenditure white paper published on November 1 reduced planned English trunk road construction by -£40m next year."
Finally, the BRF comes out in favour of larger and heavier lorries with more axles, as proposed by our EEC partners. This would reduce freight costs per tonne mile, but by the use of additional axles road damage would also be reduced