Road rail link benefits
Page 37
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AFTER READING the news item "Road Wreckers" (CM, March 8), I completely agree with Mr Buckton's statements to Sir Arthur Armitage on the damage caused to motorways and buildings by the increasing number and weight of road vehicles in this country.
Mr Buckton, unless the article is taken out of context, has diagnosed the problems but seems to suggest an answer lies in improved Section 8 privatesidings grants to potential customers. This would certainly help, but the question I would ask Mr Buckton is what does he and his fellow workers in the railway industry propose to do towards it themselves?
There are commercial firms extremely interested in the long-term potential for railway transportation, of which I count myself one, some to the extent they are prepared to invest large amounts of capItal to develop integrated road /rail facilities. This, I would have thought should bring positive response from all sides in our railway industry.
However, there appears to be some inconsistency in Mr Buckton's statement and what in practice tends to be the case. He has the betterment of the environment in mind, but what of the restrictions placed recently on the movement of private sector steel traffic by rail because it was breaking the steel strike.' while steel was steel being carried by road transport?
Customers also tend to remember the efforts of carriers under difficult conditions and, rightly so, they will be more co-operative with those who performed best.
Does Mr Buckton expect traffic to be transferred to rail automatically. irrespective of performance and customer service?
As someone with many years experience in road transporta tion, I can assure him that the road haulage industry in this country is an efficient and flexible organisation that will cope with the inconvenience of restrictions on drivers' hours, tachographs, and so on in order to give customers the service that they have been used to in the past.
For rail to make inroads into new traffics will require both efficient rail management and an equally efficient and cooperative work force.
J. S. WOOD Managing Director Smith & Co Ltd Horbury Wakefield, Yorkshire