| Topic: | Re:Re:Re:Re:Re:Navigation impediment | |
| Posted by: | Yola Dragon | |
| Date/Time: | 11/03/10 09:40:00 |
| Nigel, you claim to have the support of government bodies and planning law yet you are taking the Planning Inspectorate to Court over their approval of the River Brent moorings - some support! The reality is that the government's principal measure for encouraging freight on the Thames is the safeguarding of wharves as set out in the London Plan. It is no accident that the most westerly of the safeguarded wharves is Hurlingham wharf since the government and the PLA realise that the navigational difficulties of handling large freight vessels become much greater further upstream. 1,000t barges are currently taken up to Wandsworth but very much smaller barges would be needed for a service up to Brentford. As vessel size decreases the economic case for water transport rapidly disappears. It is very well harking back to the past when freight was carried in 100 ton capacity barges but that was in the days when road transport was much more expensive and a large truck carried 10 tons. Today we have 44 tonne trucks on the road; they are in plentiful supply, only require a single operator and, compared to a barge, are very cheap to run. Small freight vessels have therefore, for good economic reasons, had their day. The waterways however have not had their day, they are experiencing a renaisance for leisure use which started in the 1960s and continues today. On the Thames the key enabler for this change has been the cleaning of the river by diversion of sewage outfalls, a project which is still ongoing. Before the PLA's new rowing code was introduced they assessed the risk of collisions between rowers and powered vessels to be unacceptable (see Salvage Association 2005 report on PLA website). With the new code that risk is reduced but it still remains one of the highest rated risks to human life on the river. If freight operations were added to the narrow upper reaches then the collision risk could only be increased again requiring further restrictions on rowers. |