£5m a year to get lorries off the road
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IE GOVERNMENT is now spending over Om a year to support the insfer of environmentally sensitive traffic from road to rail, and is sanctioned the allocation of E348,000 for three schemes in uth and east England.
Announcing the allocation of a latest batch of grants under ■ ction 8 of the 1974 Railways rt, Transport Under Secretary Reginald Eyre pointed out that £36.5m has been awarded since the scheme started in 1975.
"I am pleased that it will be possible by means of these grants to avoid up to 20,000 lorry movements a year on roads in many parts of the country. Grants such as these are an important part of the Government's policy to reduce whereever possible the problems caused by lorry traffic," he said.
"They also endorse our commitment to transporting freight by rail where this is practicable, -and emphasise the part that the railways have to play in the carriage of goods," Mr Eyre added.
Powell Duffryn Fuels has been awarded £61,000 for modernisation of coal reception facilities at Ashford, in Kent, and another £180,000 for similar facilities at Hove, in West Sussex. Both depots will be equipped with under-rail discharge hoppers, conveyors, storage areas, and shovel loaders.
According to the Department of Transport, this will increase the tonnage which can be handled by rail, and the consequent reduction in lorry traffic will benefit the North Midlands and South Wales as well as the areas around the depots.
G. G. Papworth has been granted £105,000 to modernise its rail unloading and storage facilities at its depot north of Ely, in Cambridgeshire.
A wide range of bulk commodities brought into the depot by road will now go by rail instead, and, as well as relieving local roads in the Fen country, this will also provide environmental relief on Teesside and NorthWest England.
Section 8 grants, which have been extended to cover waterway projects as recommended in the Armitage Report on lorries, people, and the environment, form part of the Government's mixed armoury to try to push through its increasingly troubled plan to increase gross weight limits.