Meals for wheels
Page 5
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• Truckers faced with endless stretches of British roads offering no adequate truckstops have long known that we lag far behind the Continent in terms of driver facilities.
Urgent action must be taken in the interests of drivers, road safety and the environment says the Freight Transport Association, which has found that 3,200km of primary routes it surveyed in the north and east of England are served by a paltry 36 transport cafés. Worse still, only 10 of these oases could offer a shower and a bed for the night.
The FTA launched its "Meals For Wheels" campaign this week at Nell's Cafe off the A2 near Gravesend, Kent, which it holds to be a shining example of what is needed.
"A driver who's had a shower, a rest and a decent meal is a safe driver," the FTA says. The association wants the Dip to spend more on lorry parks which could then be franchised to truckstop businesses. The Government should also enforce a more favourable consideration of planning requests to balance local opposition, and sites should be built every 30-65km apart, says the survey.
The report complains: "the private motorist is more profitable than the lorry driver. Lorry parks cost far more to build than car parks and take fewer vehicles. Little Chefs, Roadchefs dnd Happy Eaters are invariably no-go areas for truckers."
In desperation, drivers resort to laybies with pull-in facilities which the FTA says are no substitute for a proper sites.
The report has been formally presented to the DTp.