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Does anyone have a Plan B?
Page 9
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With the collapse of the Lorry Road User Charge Brian Weatherley detects more than a faint whiff of grapeshot in the air.
Like lambs to the slaughter the industry's two trade associations followed the government through the front door of the Lorry Road User Charge abattoir-and ended up well and truly gutted. Well, whose fault is that?
If the current spate of letters and news stories in CM are anything to go by there are quite a few operators out there who feel the Road Haulage and Freight Transport Associations were at best naive to go down the primrose path on congestion charging.
Quite why they thought the LRUC was the fabled level-playing field' between foreign and domestic hauliers is hard to say. The argument seems to run: Well it wasn't perfect but we felt we had to carry on with it in lieu of anything better." Which, of course, is no argument at all. When the government first hinted that it would tackle the 'foreign invasion' in November 20011 suggested that the quickest way would be a paper eurovignette system as used abroad. "Nonsense!" boomed the wise men. 'It would hardly cover the cost of operation. The answer is electronics!" Isn't it always?
Unfortunately, having been determined to embrace a high-tech solution, both the RHA and ETA ultimately declined a cheap-and-cheerful substitute that could have addressed the problem of foreign competition four years ago. And where did it get them? The real irony is that electronic road charging is currently the only viable answer to tackling congestion and unfair foreign competition.
Before Roger King and Richard Turner accuse me of muddled thinking, the solution to the problem was always going to be: "Choose either one from column A or one from column B" not "None of the above", which is exactly what we've ended up with.
So what exactly is the fallback position? Where is Plan B? Richard? Roger? Anyone...?
• Don't forget to visit my web log by clicking on www.bizbuzzmedia.com and check out big lorry blog.
"Why they thought the 'RUC was the fabled 'level playing field' between foreign and domestic hauliers is hard to say"