Plea for better parking facilities
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• "What alarms us is the kind of report we are receiving of the plans that are being hatched within the Department of the Environment. There are rumours that the lorry parks to be sponsored by the Department will have security standards worthy of the Bank of England and that the charge to operators, who will be compelled to use the parks, will reflect the considerable cost of the security, precautions and will be based on the assumption that the driver also will be staying overnight on the site. To us this seems ridiculous."
These comments were made by Mr W. McMillan, national chairman of the Road Haulage Association, at the annual luncheon of the RHA East Midlands area in Nottingham on Monday. It should be brought to the notice of the Department, added Mr McMillan, that probably the majority of vehicles which the police directed into compounds would belong to operators, very often owner-drivers, who lived in the locality and who did not therefore require a room in the lorry motel. There was no justification for persecuting these small operators and compelling them to pay an inflated charge for putting their vehicles off the street.
Earlier Mr McMillan said that an enlightened public authority should be prepared to provide parking space free of charge, in view of the indispensable service that lorries were giving to the local community. On the other hand there would be no strong objection to a reasonable charge. The same degree of security was not required for an empty tipping vehicle as that provided for, say, a lorry with a load of whisky.
After arguing in detail that the claim of British Railways to have a profit in a year of f 14.7m was based on specious reasoning, Dr Clifford Sharp, Department of Economics and Transport Research Unit, University of Leicester, said that he, like others, was often frustrated as a car driver by heavy lorries. But he also benefited from a growth in the economy which would be impossible without road transport. The most serious problem facing road transport operators, he said, was the opposition of public opinion. The public tended to think of the railways as a romantic symbol of the past. While the environmental problem had to be taken seriously there were many ignorant people who would not face up to economic realities.
At a meeting of the Midland area committee on the morning of the luncheon, Mr. G. W. Pell, of G. W. Pell (Kirton) Ltd, Boston, was appointed area chairman. And Mr R. Wilson, of R. Wilson Brothers, Belper, Derbyshire, and Mr M. J. Hemphrey, of M. J. Hemphrey Transport Ltd, Nottingham, were appointed vicechairmen.