LANE LUNACY
Page 24
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John Prescott believes in a new concept of motorway madness, doing his best to madden all motorists, punishing drivers and, with Gordon Brown, taxing the road transport industry out of all competitiveness with our European neighbours.
His aim is to make life more miserable for the motorist and presumably he welcomes the consequent delays to traffic on the M4. The Prime Minister was right to tear him off a strip.
Mr Prescott appears blissfully ignorant of the fact that, in addition to cars, he will strangle precious commercial traffic bringing us our daily bread.
Dr Jonathan Richmond's letter (CM 26 June-1 July) speaks of Thigh-occupant-vehicle lane schemes" in the US, which are always extra lanes to existing highways—not a short section sliced out of a three-lane road at its busiest point.
Mr Prescott's expensive experiment fizzles out after three miles and is currently being ignored by the majority of taxis and buses, since they then cannot return to the two remaining lanes when the 'dedicated" section ends after approximately five minutes. Some experiment.
From personal knowledge, the special US lanes run separately for long stretches alongside the main interstate highways and do, indeed, speed things along for buses, fully occupied commuter vehicles, hire cars and taxis. But the North Americans' fourto-six-to-eight-lane highways are not left alone to cope with their ever-increasing volume of traffic and are being augmented constantly.
No North American politician would dare to run for office on a ban-the-car ticket.
As 25 million British car owners will agree, what this country needs is more trunk roads, more city parking and more convenience for their users— not less. With the huge revenue from road taxation, we can well afford it. This Government was elected to unify the nation, not drive it to distraction.
As a member of the House of Lords I may not have a vote myself, but virtually banning our right to drive a car or truck could well become a major election issue here. Trying to ram the Euro through failed. It's time to think about the consequences of Prescotting our driving.
Lord Hanson, Hanson Transport Group.