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Janus comments
Page 112
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Fishing expedition
DEMONSTRATIONS, meetings and parades must have attracted local attention to road operators which they might turn to their advantage in many ways apart from winning support for their attack on the unwelcome provisions in the Transport Bill. The measure is not uniformly bad. Some parts of it provide those operators who are patient enough to search with valuable opportunities to improve their circumstances.
Part X, headed "Regulation of road traffic," lies in the upper reaches of the Bill where the language, scarcely limpid at the best of times, finally silts up. It is almost choked with uninviting stretches of verbiage beginning, for example, "after subsection (3) of the said section 1 there be inserted the following subsection" and ending, with a faint touch of irony, "and for the avoidance of doubt it is hereby declared that the said subsection (4) shall be deemed always to have had the like effect as if it had been enacted with the substitution provided for by paragraph (a) of this subsection."
Good fishing can often be found in the most unlikely places. Part X justifies closer examination. Acknowledging that "it is difficult to understand on its own" the Ministry of Transport has explained that the intention is solely to provide textual amendments to the Road Traffic Regulations Act 1967. The text has now been published of this Act as it would appear with the amendments proposed in the Bill.
To the layman this may not be of much greater assistance. The proposed insertions are indicated by heavy type and the omissions by a row of dots similar to those in the more old-fashioned novels where a particularly torrid sequence might otherwise have been expected.
Obscure
Here again the wording is obscure, if not opaque, and does not readily yield up its meaning; although one or two finds may be recorded such as clause 45(1) which provides that the "Minister may make grants out of moneys provided by Parliament towards the cost of the provision and maintenance of off-street parking places."
Light breaks more clearly with the Ministry of Transport circular "Traffic and transport plans" distributed to all local authorities. It explains that by means of Part X of the Transport Bill the Minister proposes to strengthen their powers to regulate traffic, enabling them to control traffic and parking for amenity as well as for traffic purposes.
At the same time, the circular continues, she is proposing to do away with much detailed Ministerial control and also to pay capital grants towards public transport facilities as well as highways.
Local authorities in England are being asked to send the Minister within the next 18 months their traffic and transport plans for the period up to the mid-1970s. The direct request is confined to urban authorities of over 50,000 population and to traffic and parking authorities in the conurbations outside Greater London. Small traffic authorities are also invited to prepare plans, especially those with particularly difficult problems as in historic towns. The Minister will increasingly use the plans sent to her "as a background against which to consider future investment and grant proposals," says the circular. Road operators would be missing a chance which may not recur to improve the environment for their own benefit if they did not take steps to ensure that their needs are met in whatever plans their local authorities put forward.
Operators should be under no illusion that their interests would be safeguarded without an effort on their part. The emphasis throughout the circular is on passenger transport. This does justice to the p.s.v. operators and is reassuring to the motoring electorate. Unless they do something about it goods vehicle operators may find once again that their welfare has been ignored.
Matters which are specified as affecting future traffic patterns are urban renewal, highway improvements, public transport and off-street car and lorry parks. To this extent some enlightenment may be discerned. The circular goes on to urge the authorities to see that local interests are properly consulted and that the police are brought into the planning. When it comes to details the only local interests specified are bus operators, the Traffic Commissioners and British Railways.
Suggestion
Nothing in the circular suggests that road operators would be discouraged if they took the initiative by approaching their local authority. They would be justified in complaining to the Minister and to Parliament if cons tation was refused or if their suggestions w re too blatantly ignored.
The British Road Federation has suggesed to the Minister that local authorities sh uld be obliged to publish their plans and s ould make them available for inspection ;before submission "so that local people have an opportunity to comment". Operators should go further than this and demand that they should play a part from the outset in formulating the plans. At least the circular appears to make the lorry park respectable. Joint consultation would assist the provision of proper facilities, including suitable catering and accommodation adjacent to the park or nearby, reasonable fees, every encouragement to drivers to use the park and where necessary the construction of a security section for vehicles with valuable loads.
Sensibly sited lorry parks would ease the parking situation in the streets. As a longterm project—and the circular envisages reports showing the situation at two points of time, one in 1970 and the other in 1974— the local authority must be educated into refusing permission for new industrial or commercial premises unless there is proper access for vehicles and adequate loading and unloading facilities.
It is difficult to see who can give advice on this better than operators who have practical experience in handling the vehicles and the goods that will come in and out and can point to future developments such as the use of containers and permitted increases in the size of vehicles.
New and growing industrial estates must allow space for the premises of operators and for vehicles to stand. Local authorities must learn to look with a favourable eye on requests for planning permission from operators whether for new premises or for expansion to make room for a growing fleet or for better maintenance facilities.
Invitation
In looking some way ahead it may also be necessary to allow for the closure of railway goods depots. The site should not be disposed of until the local authority has satisfied itself that substitute transport services are available.
The local authority is not required to restrict its inquiries to its own boundaries. The circular embodies an invitation to consult the divisional road engineer and other Government officers during the preparation of a plan and recommends that this should always be done where trunk roads are involved.
Much of the goods traffic in and out of a town is carried for long distances. To some local authorities, or so it may seem to the operators concerned, the vehicles and their drivers are made as unwelcome as possible, threatened with prosecution and chivvied from one site to another.
Local operators can provide the necessary link. It may be found that improved approach roads will help to solve a town's traffic problem. Farther afield the authority ought to take an interest in the main routes which lie between a town's industries and their markets and sources of supply.
Traffic and transport plans reaching the Minister over the next 18 months should in every case include an appraisal from the point of view of the goods vehicle operator. In a matter which so vitally concerns him the individual operator should need no encouragement to make his views known. In most cases it would be convenient for operators in a town or district to make a joint approach as members of their road transport association which in addition should be prepared to help with advice and specifications.