topic Autumn fashions
Page 61
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MOST of the old-established amenity organizations, it may have been noticed, have cosy, insular names, like Civic Trust and Council for the Protection of Rural England. The quaint echo of the cottage industry carries over into much of their reasoning, however much they try to avoid it. The juggernaut theme is therefore greatly to their liking, especially when they can point to an increase in the number of foreign lorries invading this blessed plot, this other Eden.
To judge from the behaviour of most people. they are not worried about preserving green fields and ancient monuments, but they all have some experience of the heavy lorry and are prepared to agree to dislike it. When the environment movement attacks the juggernaut, it suddenly finds itself for once no longer a coterie or minority interest. It is riding a wave of popularity. No wonder it cannot resist the temptation to give the heavy lorry the chief rank in its demonology.
Of course, the amenity groups are too sensible to suppose that they can save England's green and pleasant land simply by abolishing the heavy lorry. They are bound to admit the necessity for it. They merely wish it would stop putting on weight and that the traders with goods to carry would use the railways like everybody else.
They are falling into line with the fashion this autumn, which will be to insist that instead of one there are several transport problems for which a common solution is required. The environmentalists will be looking to Mr John Peyton to produce that solution when he announces his plans in Parliament. He is likely to deal with the railways first, and with road transport at a later stage, but the demand will still be for some miracle of integration.
A pointer towards this was given by Mr Keith Speed at the Freight Transport Association conference last week. One of the least productive aspects of recent debates on transport matters, he said, had been the road-rail controversy. "It is not sensible for road to knock rail or vice versa.He hoped there would be increasing co-operation.
On the whole, and apart from the antics of British Rail's advertising department, the reproach of lack of co-operation exists only in the minds of the accusers. Hauliers make extensive use of Freightliner trains and any other rail services that suit their purpose. The railways are only too pleased to leave unsuitable traffic for carriage by road.
The occasional philippics by the BR chairman, Mr Richard Marsh, should not be taken too seriously. If he coins a phrase such as "mechanical triffids", he would be the last person to refrain from using it. It means no more than some of Mr Marsh's statistics, paraded in his inimitable fashion also at the PTA conference.
It was a characteristically impish touch to quote against the road transport industry from Dr Clifford Sharp's Living with the Lorry. It contains forecasts of the number of heavy lorries likely to be needed by the year 2010 if the economy continues to grow at a rate of, say, 3 per cent or 5 per cent. Dr Sharp also allows for a substantial increase in rail traffic, but points out that this would make little difference to the demand for road transport.
The statistic which Mr Marsh selects is the projected increase from 55,000 (in 1970) to 365,000 (in 2010) in the number of lorries weighing more than 8 tons unladen. Public opinion would force governments to prevent this, he says. This "heavily populated and small island" could not cope with a growth on such a scale.
The assumption is an easy one to which most people would give instant agreement. It may still not be correct. The main objection to the heavy lorry comes when it is in the wrong place, a narrow village street for example. If a railway ran through the street, the protests would be just as loud.
Somewhat hesitantly Dr Sharp suggests as the long-term solution a reduction in the demand for goods transport. He admits that it may not be easy to achieve. There is little to be said in favour of merely transferring the traffic from one mode to another. Moreover, because of the artificial significance now attached to the heavy lorry, even the experts sometimes forget that it is no more than a means to an end.
More transfer points At a conference on transport held by the CPR E last weekend, for example, Mr Stefan Tietz, a planning and engineering consultant, in explaining the need for more transfer points if the Channel tunnel was not to be an environmental disaster, calculated that one lane of motorway continuously occupied by lorries for eight hours carried only the equivalent of 25 goods trains over the same period. Whether or not the arithmetic is Correct, comparisons of this kind about imaginary flows of traffic are really no more useful now than they would be in the year 2010.
Operators should take particular note of what is being said against their interests at this juncture. In contrast with the highly coloured pronouncements of the environmentalists and the railway supporters, speeches by Mr Peyton and his Ministers may seem almost entirely to consist of platitudes and palliatives. This is likely to be no more than the calm before the
Parliamentary storm. by Janus