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IODIC

9th February 1973
Page 42
Page 42, 9th February 1973 — IODIC
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Which of the following most accurately describes the problem?

Window-dressing

ACCORDING to the copy book maxim, if the flow of traffic is dammed at one point, it becomes a flood somewhere else. The lesson is driven home time and again in London, where the traffic problem is most acute. Although the authorities and their experts know what will happen, they are compelled to take action, perhaps against their better judgment, as a result of clamour by what may be a very small section of public opinion.

Proposals for bans on heavy lorries tend to be announced with a flourish which disguises the fact that they may make little difference in practice. The restrictions planned for six square miles of central London seemed at first to be total. It was made plain a little later that lorries would still have the right of access, and in any case the ban involves only lorries longer than 40ft.

For the most part the exercise is a sham. The number of vehicles affected is a tiny proportion of the total lorry fleet. Their absence or presence will make conditions only a little easier in the forbidden area. What is saved there will be transferred to the peripheral route and beyond. The GLC knows this, and perhaps for this reason has fixed on 40ft — with its fortuitous numerical association with EEC vehicle weights — as the length limit least likely to have much effect.

Road transport operators have reservations about the ban. Their public reaction has been on the whole to welcome it. Perhaps they had no alternative. By going with the tide, they have weakened the force of any attacks which might have been made on them. Their opposition would only have encouraged the interests which are seeking every possible means of hitting the heavy lorry where it hurts.

Confusion over the whole issue of transport has reached danger point. Recent Parliamentary debates, including the second reading of the Heavy Commercial Vehicles (Controls and Regulations) Bill, have shown the growing difficulty of any rational discussion. Organizations opposed to the heavy lorry (whatever their ostensible purpose) are springing up nationally and locally, sometimes pursuing divergent aims and at other times combining with each other.

At any moment, if it has not already happened, the Government will be borne away on the flood of protest. The latest warning is the acceptance of the Bill in the House of Commons. Whatever the private opinion of the Ministers concerned, they would have had no chance of rejecting the measure, nor even of talking it out.

What may be the most disturbing fact of all is that, with few exceptions, the critics of the heavy lorry admit that it is indispensable. This recognition is not allowed to affect their arguments. For example, the Bill proposes the total prohibition of heavy vehicles from certain areas. Except as a piece of environmental window-dressing, the idea seems fatuous.

If there is no need for lorries in a certain area — and it would be difficult to name one — then they are not likely to enter it. In other cases, local protests would be so vigorous that the advisory council which the Bill envisages would hardly dare to impose a ban and Parliament would certainly not confirm it.

No more practical is the associated proposal of depots where the contents of large vehicles could be transferred. Wherever it was suggested that such a depot should be built, the local community would raise as much opposition as it would to a plan for a stretch of motorway. Indeed, the opposition might be stronger. The depot would require its own network of service roads. In an industrial area it would attract an enormous volume of traffic and would very likely have to keep busy all day and all night Except that it would be substantial, no estimate can be made of the extra cost to operators and their customers of the transhipments and the delays. The net benefit to amenity would be nil. There would be fewer heavy vehicles, but many more vehicles in total.

Transport lobbies Too much concern for the environmen and for the vociferous opinions of it: so-called champions can be self-defeating Until comparatively recently, it wa: generally accepted that the road programmi was falling further and further behind th4 requirements of road users and that all thi available resources must be directec towards narrowing the gap. This principh may not have been repudiated, but there at., interests which are bent on obscuring it, fo the benefit of the railways, or the canals o even of an airship lobby.

Road building takes time. Variou stop-gap expedients are necessary. They an not alternatives. A forward-looking row programme must be part of a policy whicl allows, in the interim, for the mos favourable development of the essentia elements in the country's transport.

If there must be priorities, commercia goods vehicles and public service vehicle are at the top of the list. Restrictions shoub be placed on them only in the last resort The main squeeze should be applied to othe road users. They will have to take conifer in the fact that the enlargement of thei freedom will keep pace with the acceleratioi of the road programme. It might even b realized by the motorist, for example, that i swelling the outcry against the lorry he i acting against his own long-term interests.

by Janu:

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Organisations: House of Commons
Locations: London

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