Routes to better roads?
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The East Sussex lorry route plan serveS mainly to highlight the inadequacy of the present road system — not only for the purpose of keeping heavy traffic away from vulnerable places but also for the efficient carriage of essential goods. This is not exclusive to East Sussex; many of the route plans we can expect over the next year or so are likely to reveal the same failings.
The plan also emphasizes what transport men — and indeed all road users — have always known: labelling routes as advisory or designated does not magically create new roads. In fact, the East Sussex "plan" merely sets down on paper what is happening already through sheer common sense: no driver would choose to plunge into the maze of little lanes which the proposals are designed to outlaw to heavies, unless perhaps he is a stranger who has lost his way or is desperately seeking an alternative to a congested main road. And no operator deliberately routes his vehicles along narrow ways which put them at risk — unless, of course, the vehicles have business there. Fertilizer has to get to farms, and products, notably milk in bulk, have to travel economically from farm to user.
The most likely — and best — outcome of such schemes is that, by showing up the poor road networks, better roads will be built that much quicker. Meantime, operators and drivers should certainly do their best to co-operate in the project; this is merely one of many areas in which co-operation and restraint by operators can obviate the need for restrictive legislation. Operators would, however, co-operate more readily if consultation by the relevant authority was on more than the apparently minimal level extended in East Sussex; perhaps because of TV and newspaper probing, the county routes plan appears to have been announced in some haste. The authority has only to look west to see how Portsmouth and Southampton have involved transport operators from the start in their overnight lorry parking project, which is recommended for implementation over five years and thus has every likelihood of support and success.