§ Mr. Bradleyasked the Secretary of State for the Environment what progress has been made following the July 1974 consultation paper on routes for heavy lorries; and if he will make a statement.
§ Dr. GilbertI have now made an appraisal of the full and valuable response to the consultation paper issued by my predecessor. The Department will shortly be discussing our preliminary conclusions with the main organisations concerned.
We propose to establish a network of through routes for heavy lorries that will, as far as practicable, keep them away from environmentally sensitive areas and will at the same time recognise the need to provide for the efficient distribution of goods which is essential to the preservation of our standards of living.
The 3,100-mile network in the consultation paper will not be completed for a long time, and the consultation has confirmed that even then it will be too small to be workable. It is, however, important that we make a start. We propose, therefore, to devise a system under which roads should become lorry routes as and when they are suitable for this purpose. Those routes would be signed accordingly and, at least initially, would be advisory.
I hope that discussions can now start with the authorities concerned to decide which routes are suitable. We have made a preliminary selection for the discussions of about 8,000 miles of the existing 11,000 miles of motorways and primary routes. I hope that a consider- 546W able mileage will be agreed for signing in the first round of discussions, but many gaps will necessarily remain to be filled before a comprehensive network can be agreed.
The system will need to be regularly reviewed and altered as new or improved roads become available. Given present restraints on public expenditure, a comprehensive network will take several years to achieve.
In the meantime, the motorways and primary routes will continue to provide the framework for local authorities' traffic and lorry plans, and the authorities could usefully concentrate their own work under the Heavy Commercial Vehicles (Controls and Regulations) Act 1973 on prohibitions of heavy traffic from unsuitable roads and on dealing with local trouble spots in towns. Any additional expenditure to implement local lorry plans will have to be matched by reductions in other expenditure on transport.