The poor state of Britian’s roads does not lie with the logistics industry say the Freight Transport Association (FTA)
According to the Local Government Association (LGA) there are more potholes and wear of the roads because of the 5% rise in lorries on British roads since last year, an increase of 1.7bnt. LGA transport spokesman Martin Tett said...“Our local roads network faces an unprecedented funding crisis and the latest spike in lorries could push our local roads network over the edge. Lorries exert massively more weight on road surfaces than cars, causing them to crumble far quicker.”According to the Department of Transport’s road freight statistics the food and drink industry accounted for nearly a quarter of the road traffic in the UK in 2015. However, the FTA refute this, instead calling the lack of government spending on repairs the real issue. The FTA insist that the cuts to local insfrastructure have caused a repair backlog on a national level. The FTA’s head of policy Christopher Snelling said the LGA’s report was an attempt to escape responsibility for the problem...
“The real issue is the need for increased funding from central government to address the potholes problem nationwide, local authorities are facing large bills – one-off costs of approximately £69M per council – to bring their roads up to a reasonable condition.”Snelling continued...
“The transportation of essential goods on our roads is crucial to the continued health of the economy. To claim that lorries are the cause of the potholes across the country is simply not true. Larger lorries do not cause increased damage to the road surface – in fact, they have more axles which spread payloads more evenly. When combined with road-friendly twin tyres and road-friendly suspension, this reduces the impact of road usage by lorries.”When responding to a recent RAC survey on potholes, Martin Tett had this as his response...
‘’Councils are fixing more potholes than ever – one every 15 seconds – and keeping roads safe is one of the most important jobs we do. However, councils face a £12 billion backlog of road repairs, which would already take councils more than 10 years to clear. Over the remaining years of this decade the Government will invest over £1.1 million per mile in maintaining main roads and motorways, which make up just three per cent of all total roads. However, it invests £27,000 per mile in council-controlled local roads, which make up 97 per cent of England's road network. This difference in funding puts the country's businesses at a competitive disadvantage and provides poor value for money’’The state of Britain’s roads has long been a source of contention, but with increased usage and little money to make improvements, unfortunately our industry will always be under scrutiny.