The Rail Freight Group today expressed its concern at Government proposals to extend the length of articulated lorries by up to 2.05m.
The DfT consultation, which closes today, outlines plans to permit lorries of up to 18.75m to operate in the UK, despite the devastating impact that this would have for the rail freight sector.
The DfT’s impact assessment shows that the introduction of these longer lorries would ‘reduce domestic rail freight growth by two thirds by 2025, and fails to properly address the viability of the remaining traffic on rail’.
The analysis goes onto state this reduction as a ‘benefit to the logistics sector, with some 84% of the quoted cost savings associated with longer lorries coming from reduced rail costs’.
RFG Policy Manager, Maggie Simpson said:
“It is deeply worrying that despite the huge impacts on domestic rail freight growth, DfT wish to allow longer lorries to operate.
“This cuts across all their previous commitments to multimodal transport, to congestion relief and to climate change. We urge Ministers to look again at this damaging proposal.”
I think this article misses the point completely. Longer lorries allows higher volumes to be carried not higher weights. Most of the intermodal traffic moving in the UK is heavy weight packaged and palletised material which would max out an HGV long before any benefit in pallet space is realised. If the lightweight/high volume high street fashion retailers can use 3 lorries instead of 4 for the delivery of goods direct to shops then great, I’m all for it.