Only the tip of the iceberg
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YOU WERE RIGHT to give prominence to the proposals by North Yorkshire County Council to ban through lorries over a 300 square mile area (CM February 9). Like the Windsor Cordon and the A58 ban we must be concerned that the enormous operational costs are achieving little environmental benefit.
However, from where I sit, looking after FTA's involvement in these issues countrywide, this is only the tip of a very large iceberg. There is considerable evidence of mounting pressure at local level for more and more lorry bans which prompted us to emphasise to Sir Arthur. Armitage that to date these are costing us £42m a year.
It might surprise a lot of your readers to learn, for example, that FTA's monitoring service has identified 40 amenity bans that have been made by local authorities in England and Wales (excluding the GLC) in the last two months. At this rate the annual cost will rise from E.42m to E.75m by the end of 1980 — and you can buy a lot of York bypasses for E.75m!
R. K. TURNER Controller Planning and Traffic Services Freight Transport Association Tunbridge Wells, Kent