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Longer hauls bigger lorries

2nd July 1976, Page 65
2nd July 1976
Page 65
Page 65, 2nd July 1976 — Longer hauls bigger lorries
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Which of the following most accurately describes the problem?

MUCH effort has gone into calculating the growth in road transport over the next five or 10 years or even longer. The reasons for curiosity vary. The anti-road lobby has aimed to prove that by the turn of the century there will be as many 24or 32-tonners as there are now lorries over 3 tons or so gross laden weight.

The intention here has been to make the flesh creep and provoke the demand for restrictions on the growth and for the transfer of traffic to rail. As the prophecies have been falsified by events and the re .cue attempt by British Rail has dropped out of serious consideration, the environmentalists have quietened down, and are evidently puzzled about their next move.

For its part, the Department of the Environment would like to know about changes in the number and use of vehicles, so as to have a better idea of the road development needed to contain those vehicles. The fact that the same Department is simultaneously curtailing or postponing the road programme does not appear to bother the forecasters.

Operators have perhaps the greatest interest and the greatest stake in future possibilities. Although they may have a good idea of the situation in their own bit of the industry, they want more general information to complete the picture. They can look for guidance only in the official figures.

Much of what they want to know must be assembled from various documents, and there is extra confusion at the moment because of the switch to metrication. The Consultation Document on Transport Policy, for example, refers to a growth of 20 per cent in goods transport over 10 years and measures this growth in tonkilometres. Transport Statistics, in which the figures originally appeared, gives them in tonmiles.

From the same source comes supporting evidence for the additional statement in the document that the tonnages of goods carried have hardly increased. The main change therefore must have been in the average length of haul.

Lorry journeys are getting longer. The official explanation is given as "probably" the growing concentration of industry. The trend is away from local factories supplying local markets, and towards fewer, larger factories each supplying the whole country.

How has the trend affected hauliers in particular? For the reply is is necessary to go back to Transport Statistics, which obligingly separates tonnage and ton-mileage according to whether the traffic is carried on own account or for hire and reward. The following table spans a recent 7-year period : Tonnage increased only slightly, but ton-mileage by one quarter, almost all of the increase in the vehicles of hauliers.

A Transport Road Research Laboratory report giving forecasts of vehicles and traffic introduces a new theme by comparing the total of ton-kilometres by all forms of transport with the gross domestic product. Since 1969 there has been a slow decrease in the ratio and the report estimates a more rapid decrease in the future.

This seems to contradict the Consultation Document. The report was published early in 1975, and there may subsequently have been some change of opinion on the importance of the environmental case.

Indeed, the later forecast is of a continuing increase in the average length of haul by road, although the rate of increase may decline.

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