The sight of thousands of lorries at Manston airport and on the M20, snaking it’s way through Kent, with their drivers having to wait for a clear Covid test before being allowed on to the cross channel ferries just before Christmas and Brexit was reminiscent of the escape of the British expeditionary force at Dunkirk.
My response would be to develop infrastructure to accommodate the movement of all goods being imported or exported to and from the UK be containerised and moved by rail through the channel tunnel, preferably at night, to and from hubs at various locations around the UK. This would relieve the traffic on Britain’s roads and the damage to the surface caused by the heavy lorries, saving cost of repair. It would avoid the movement of thousands of drivers who could be harbouring the virus. It would save the cost of policing the build top of traffic, the cost of the removal of litter left behind and the cost of the Covid test itself (only a handful of Covid tests to those driving the trains). All paperwork could be handled at the hubs making the movement of goods far speedier. I am sure, in this world of “just in time delivery”, that transportation times and costs could be cut significantly.
British firms would benefit from infrastructure projects to construct the hubs bringing about new construction job opportunities too. The fields used to construct lorry parks could be returned to farmland. Gone would be the danger of getting tangled up with overseas lorries in accidents on our roads as the railways have proved far more safer. If we are to embrace self driving electric cars of the future surely it would be safer and more popular if we were to remove as many HGVs as possible from the roads.
We would also benefit greatly by avoiding the emissions caused by the current fleet of vehicles as it would be electricity driving the trains instead. This would surely contribute greatly to our reduction in emissions target. Smaller and less invasive, possibly even electric, delivery vehicles could then distribute from these hubs.
We already live in a containerised world with massive container ships moving the worlds goods so why not use our electrified rail system to do the same?
Kent plays host to most of the “roll on roll off” freight for the United Kingdom and it seems only right and proper to share this with hubs throughout the country.
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