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Page 55
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Meter test for a noisy minority
by janus
pROPHETS of doom have a natural temptation to exaggerate the horrors they describe. They wish to assault our sluggish imagination. They warn us of a world to come in which all the resources are used up and an ever-growing population is choked with its own rubbish.
Obviously the motor vehicle is one of the main targets for abuse. It has the ability to get to almost any spot, bringing with it fumes, noise, litter, destruction, vandalism and the possibility of opening up hitherto unspoilt areas for development which tends to promote yet more fumes, noise, pollution, etc. ,
THE role of the motor vehicle as archvillain is seen clearly, although it is not deliberately emphasized, in many of the books and articles which are being written on the subject of the environment. In meeting the challenge, the motoring and road transport associations—who are beginning to take the matter seriously— must help the public to disentangle fact from conjecture and to make a proper assessment of the prophecies.
Recently the leaders of the two road transport bodies, in entertaining the Minister for Transport Industries, Mr John Peyton, have both thought it necessary to accept the connection between their industry and the environment. On each occasion the Minister also has taken the opportunity to express what is presumably the official opinion in the appropriate phraseology.
There is "a very proper desire to curb some of the more hideous aspects of modern life," he told the Road Haulage Association, in a context which could be taken to include the heavy goods vehicle among those hideous aspects. Vibration, noise, smell and congestion are legitimate causes for concern, he went on. It would be a mistake to regard pressures against them as "emanating from a noisy minority".
WTH the Freight Transport Association a few days previously he was a little more positive. He hinted that the ban on heavier lorries might be relaxed, if the nuisance which they caused could be reduced and if they were restricted to the roads which could safety accommodate them.
Speeches on social occasions should perhaps not be scrutinized too closely. Mr Peyton. however, gave every appearance of choosing his words carefully. He did not seem worried about the confusion that could have arisen in the minds of his listeners.
It is self-evident that vibration, noise, smell and congestion are disliked by more than a "noisy minority". Nobody likes them. But the campaign against the heavier lorry is surely no more than a specialist interest. The heavy lorry was adopted by a number of pressure groups as a hate-symbol for road transport in general. As usually happens, the public have accepted the symbol uncritically without evaluating the implications.
AT both of the recent functions, the spokesmen for the industry pointed out that road transport could be beneficial to the environment. The RHA chairman, Mr William McMillan, extended the argument to the heavy lorry. Where four vehicles can do the work for which five would otherwise be needed, he said, "this ought to be a strong argument in favour of freedom". The fewer vehicles that are needed, the less congestion should be caused.
Conservationists have stood this point on its head. A favourite statistical exercise, which is likely to be repeated again and again, takes a number of vehicles of different weights over a period and points out where there have been the largest increases.
To give a proper dimension of horror to the effect, it is necessary to go back a long time for the starting point. The year 1956 has been adopted by some mysterious pollular choice. In that year there were 1,132,000 goods vehicles, of which only 6,000 were over 8 tons unladen and 28,000 weighed between 5 and 8 tons. In 1969 the total had risen by less than a third to 1,493,000—in the same period the number of cars had tripled—but the number over 8 tons was 46,000 and from 5 to 8 tons 121,000.
HE'RE is raw material for some bloodcurdling extrapolation. The next step in the argument is to point out that at the present rate of growth there will by 1980 be 500,000 lorries weighing more than 5 tons each and half of them will weigh over 8 tons.
The great industrial problem of the 1980s will be to provide enough traffic for all these heavy vehicles to carry. The FTA president, Mr John Elliott, has forecast that road freight will double by 1985 and double again by the turn of the century. His calculations are no doubt based on estimates of Britain's growing industrial capacity. Industry must do even better than that if there are not to be tens of thousands of empty juggernauts running wild all over the country.
LOWER down the weight scale events may take a different course. In 1956 there were 322,000 vehicles between 2 and 3 tons unladen. By 1969 the figure had dropped by well over a half to 135,000. The transport museum which has been in the news lately should lose no time in obtaining a specimen. In a few years there will be none left.
On the same basis, the early 1980s will see the car population exceed 30m. Unlikely though it may be, the mere prospect is depressing; and, if truth be told, there is nothing very exhilarating in MT Elliott's prophecy. Somewhat more than the Minister's noisy minority would be pleased if the trend shown by the 2/3-tonners could be extended to the whole of transport.
LEFT out of account in these ingenious calculations is that the van or lorry is put on the road because there are goods for it to carry. To complain that lm or 2m heavy lorries will be on the roads by the year 2000 makes no more sense than to complain that in the same year 100m pairs of shoes will be on the pavement. The boot and shoe industry must gear production to meet demand. Nobody would contemplate a situation in which half the population has to go barefoot.
If there is population control, then automatically fewer shoes will be manufactured. If by some means or other—population control is one of them—industrial production or consumer demand is kept down, there will be fewer lorries.
pOPULATION control, and restrictions on manufacture or on public and private expenditure—these are matters which can hardly be the concern of road transport operators or of a Minister
for Transport Industries, although they are very much the province of the Secretary for the Environment, Mr Peter Walker. Perhaps in due course he will accept an invitation to explain his own philosophy to operators.
Legislation, he will have to agree, can do a great deal, but it cannot decide how many goods vehicles there should be on the roads, any more than it was able by a stroke of the nationalization pen to halt the decline of the railways. An easier legislative task would be to reduce the number of cars, although any Government which dared to take such action would not long remain in office.
The mere fact that not everybody owns a car shows that people can get along without it if needs must. They have the public transport services. Without the lorry, nothing would move. Even the opponents of the lorry accept this. They baulk at the further inevitable step. If the lorry is indispensable for the carriage of goods, then it must be available in sufficient quantity—and size and weight—for the goods which are produced.