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A ban to remember, says Wetzel

3rd August 1985, Page 6
3rd August 1985
Page 6
Page 6, 3rd August 1985 — A ban to remember, says Wetzel
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by Alan Millar

THE LONDON ban will be remembered 100 years from now as one of the great steps forward for Londoners, Greater London Council transport committee chair Dave Wetzel said this week.

In a veritable tour de force, in which he hit back at the ban's critics, attacked some MPs and the road lobby, and reduced Transport Secretary Nicholas Ridley to a figure of mockery, Mr Wetzel set a monumental historical context for the ban.

"In 100 years from now, people will ask why it was that after 1985 people stopped drifting away from London." Historians of the day will point to the introduction of the night and weekend lorry ban.

It was an event comparable with the introduction of fresh tap water, refuse colleCtion, street cleaning, sewers and planning for open spaces in cities, he asserted.

He labelled the ban as "the friendliest lorry ban you could ever have" and thanked those operators which have already co-operated with the GLC in framing its plans.

He said he hoped that most lorries coming into London on night and weekend business would still get permits — by meeting the GLC's environmental standards.

But he accused opponents of the GLC's plans of creating visions of a ban which is worse than the GLC's scheme in order to knock it down.

Complaints of lorries queueing to enter congested London when the ban ends at 7am were nonsense, he said.

And he reserved particular criticism for Sainsbury's, the supermarket chain, which had told the GLC that none of its south London branches could receive goods in time for starting business in the morning.

Ile said that GLC research showed that all of the branches were within 20 minutes' drive from the exempted routes.

He urged operators to cooperate with the GLC in this very modest" and "necessary" measure, as its failure could lead to something worse.

What happened after the GLC was abolished next April could only be answered by Mr Ridley, or "Nicholas Ridiculous" as Mr Wetzel called him repeatedly. And he claimed that a decision to scrap the ban then — only weeks before the London borough elections — would leave the Conservatives unable to win a single seat.

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Locations: LONDON

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