FTA accuses Herts
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A CONSULTATION document issued by Hertfordshire County Council was not designed to record the views of trade and industry about a 40-sq mile strategic lorry ban, the Freight Transport Association has claimed.
FTA traffic officer Don McIntyre has written to the Hertfordshire county surveyor, pointing out that the leaflet on the proposed controls around St Albans is deficient. He says that it was aimed at families rather than trade and industry. "Perhaps this accounts for the omission of what the FTA regards as two key issues — traffic flows and diversionary costs," he added.
He said that while the document made clear that some roads will benefit from Hertfordshire's proposals for reduced lorry traffic, no mention is made of which roads and areas will suffer the effects of diverted traffic. And he is equally critical of the county's failure to indicate the costs which trade and industry would bear if the controls are applied.
He added that the FTA is disturbed by Hertfordshire's assertion (CM, May 1) that the Windsor Cordon has produced a net environmental benefit. He said that Transport and Road Resea rch Laboratory findings showed that the net benefit was very marginal, and Berkshire County Council admitted that there was no overall environmental benefit.
Mr McIntyre said that the lorry problem in the St Albans area can be separated into two related issues, traffic in St Albans city centre and on the A6129 which links Luton with the Welwyn/Hatfield area.
He said it was reasonable that drivers should use the M1 and M10 on through journeys, to avoid the city centre, but the long history of congestion on the southern end of the M1 and widening work now being carried out to this section made the St Albans route attractive.
Hertfordshire's own statistics show that 150 lorries a day are running through the city en route to site works for the motorway widening scheme.
Diversion from the A6129, in Mr McIntyre's view, would be "quite unreasonable and unacceptable,'' as neither the M1/M10 route nor any other would be practical. Journeys between Luton and Welwyn/Hatfield would be doubled, and only about 46 lorries (0.6 per cent of total traffic) would be diverted from the road.
He said that if the scheme is introduced, drivers are unlikely to find it easy to understand the traffic signs involved, and could have problems with the "except for access" exemptions. This could result in many breaches of the ban, and pose serious problems for police in enforcing the scheme.
"Inevitably, this can only devalue the scheme in the eyes of drivers, police — and, of course, those people whose expectations of significantly reduced lorry flows had been raised," he added.