A QUESTION OF PRIORITIES
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old the back page! It must be a slow news day when broadsheet newspapers devote two columns and a picture to the opening of the first motorway bus lane. So before anyone gets carried away, it's only a mile-long section of the Southbound M4 spur at Heathrow airport. Mind you, it is expected to carry 37,000 bus and coach passengers a day—which is 37,000 people who won't be clogging up the M4 in their cars. Sadly, far more people want to clog up your local high street than to fly to faraway places with strange sounding names. But despite its minority appeal the Heathrow scheme is a step in the right direction to tackling the curse of congestion. There's nothing new in priority lanes for PCVs: what we can't understand is why there aren't any for HGVs. After all, if the Government is right, millions of car drivers could get by quite happily by using "alternative" (public) transport. But for the majority of goods there is simply no alternative to road transport. If buses and coaches are considered important enough to merit their own lanes, the same argument must surely apply to trucks. A 38-tonner stuck in a traffic jam could be carrying hospital supplies, vital production-line components, or simply the food that keeps us all alive. If millions of car drivers happen to take Transport Minister Gavin Strang's advice by abandoning their cars and making use of public transport, we'll doubtless need even more bus lanes to handle all those extra PCVs.
Which would leave even less road space for CVs to carry out their vital work. Four years ago Commercial Motor produced a bumper sticker that read: 'Trucks keep Britain rolling," It's about time this Government realised that unless it keeps trucks moving they will be no Britain left to roll.