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• lbermann slams
Page 7
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g-bag schemes
LOAD HAULAGE ASSOCIATION iational chairman John Silbermann 'mused the Government of making cuts n the road programme that will bring the dready crippled plans to a complete halt.
"Road Transport is of little use unless we have the roads on which to operate," :le told the Scottish area of the RHA at its annual dinner last week.
He said that there have now been 11 cubs to the programme in nine successive years: "this is an appalling record for Go ernrnents which have criticised ind try for under-investment and yet have so nanifest1y failed to invest in their own tr sport network."
Mr Silbermann warned that the further decline of the road-building programme will have serious consequences on the economy. He said that if industry was to move its goods safely, quickly and economically, they must have the roads to do it. The cuts took us further away from recovery, not towards it.
He attacked the current road programme as being "a rag-bag of free standing schemes — and a pretty small rag-bag at that."
In the early 1970s Britain had been looking forward to a 4000-mile strategic road network to be completed by the mid-1980s, but that network had now become a mirage and had retreated further and further away. "The road programme is now so small that it cannot properly be called a programme," he said.
Mr Silbermann also attacked the media "and considerable sections of the illinformed groups of the public who persistently attack and oppose lorries and the roads."