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LABOUR PARTY PROMISES HOST OF LORRY PARKS FOR LONDON
Page 40
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From our Political Correspondent ONDON'S streets are being used as free garage space by all comers. It has got to stop." This major transport issue, I-4 involving 40 square miles of the capital, is one of the main arguments in the Labour Party's GLC election campaign.
At the hustings, Labour has now committed itself to providing lorry parks throughout the London area. In addition, it is pledged to bring in strict parking control over a massive central sector of the capital extending from Hammersmith to Bermondsey and from Camden Town to Brixton. .
Within this area, first priority will be to clear all street corners from parked vehicles. Second priority will be to reserve kerbside space for local trading and servicing. Next, meters will be provided for short-stay callers at homes and shops, and lastly the remaining space will be used for long-term parking by payment until off-street parks are ready.
The Socialists claim that this will help deliveries by avoiding double-banking, and promote a much freer flow of traffic throughout the capital.
Road schemes will be concentrated on keeping heavy goods traffic out of residential areas except where collection and delivery is taking place, and a blitz on lorry parking is promised.
There are signs, however, that Labour is taking a realistic view of commercial vehicles. It is accepted that road transport is a vital corn
munity service in the life of London, and that the problems must be overcome without reducing the efficiency of delivery services. The railways, it is acknowledged, cannot take over the goods traffic which travels on London's roads.
The plan for lorry parks embraces all London. Centrally, the ideal is to have parks and compounds with telephone links, so that a callforward system can be operated where applicable. To ensure that the procedure is followed, sanctions including parking controls would be operated in the areas involved.
Labour intends to tackle a major aspect of the lorry problem via the transport cafes. It is proposed to prevent the opening of new cafes in places where parking problems would be created, by use of planning controls. Conversely, new cafes will be encouraged in places where adequate off-street lorry parking is available.
It is also planned to ban on-street parking by lorry drivers using existing cafés where parking causes a problem. If this happens, the cafes will be offered if possible a more suitable site. • • It will be the aim to provide adequate café accommodation—and night guards where necessary—in the new lorry parks, and more hostels or motels where appropriate.
Mrs. Castle will also be urged to make sure that motorways and trunk roads leading into London have transport cafés with adequate overnight parking facilities for drivers to encourage them to spend the night outside London.
Labour says the key to London's congestion problem lies in improved public transport. The party is committed to a GLC takeover of London Transport and believes that local councillors throughout Greater London should have more influence over all forms of transport.
Highways chairman Mrs. Jane Phillips, who has played a main part in formulating Labour's London transport policy, last weekend lashed the Tory proposals for a London traffic "dictator" and an extensive monorail system (CommeaciAL MOTOR last week).
"There is no single man capable of pushing eight million Londoners around", she said. "The Tory suggestion of a kind of traffic super bureaucrat to try to do so is rather ridiculous."
And on the monorail, she added: "Better to spend the £53 million on the Underground railway tunnel to Brixton and on motor clearways".