Damaging road report
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on has welcomed the Transport eport on the damaging effect of THE Freight Transport Associati and Road Research Laboratory r commercial vehicles.
The FTA thinks that now maybe road engineers will build future roads to a higher standard, preventing "a recurrence of today's premature major motorway roadworks and consequent major disruption to trade and industry".
Although the TRRL report concluded that structural damage to roads was almost exclusively caused by commercial vehicles, the FTA points out that damage accounts for just 26 per cent of all road maintenance expendi ture.
The rest goes on other items such as patching, lighting and grass cutting. But 45 per cent of road maintenance costs are apportioned to goods vehicles.
Similarly, goods vehicles make up 10 per cent of total road traffic but pay 31 per cent of road capital costs. In fact, concludes FTA, even the latest Government figures reveal that goods vehicle operators are paying in taxation 1.4 times more than the costs directly attributed to them.