Liberal Democrat mayoral candidate Caroline Pidgeon has called for heavy goods and construction vehicles to be stopped from entering central London during morning and evening peak travel hours. It is the transport specialist’s second bid to make the running with congestion-busting ploys, having already said she’d hike C-charge rates and try out a new zone round Heathrow. She’s biting the demand management bullet and good for her. So how well would her HGV ban work and how much good would it do?

Depends who you talk to. Pidgeon herself is talking mostly to cyclists and those concerned about polluted air. She notes the high percentage of cyclist deaths following collisions with HGVs, with many happening during busy morning hours, and she argues that air quality would be helped because her plan would restrict traffic growth. Others see limitations and drawbacks too. “Think for a moment of liquid concrete,” urges a contact who knows about such things. He explains that this has to be delivered early and on time, otherwise it sets and spoils your day. “Imagine a driver rushing to get to a construction site before the 7:00 am curfew kicks in. Wouldn’t that make a collision with a cyclist more likely?”



A pessimistic view, perhaps. What about slapping a higher C-charge on the target trucks? Wouldn’t that better discourage such traffic and make hauliers think harder about consolidating loads? It’s a thought. The Lib Dems, though, say they’ve been advised by TfL that in the short term this would be too difficult and that their plan as it stands would encourage the same amount of cargo being transported in fewer journeys anyway. Their would fine transgressors instead.



Maybe judgment of the policy should be made within the wider context of London’s complex and fractious road management task. David Leam, infrastructure policy chief at business group London First, points out that “those vehicles aren’t in central London for the hell of it, and if you restrict them they still have to go somewhere.” He adds that although lots of construction traffic can be a problem, it is also a sign of London’s economic health: “If there was suddenly no need for them, it would mean we were in trouble.”

Not that he thinks Pidgeon wrong to raise the issue. And he believes she could be on to something when she argues for greater use of consolidation centres, where separate deliveries can be brought together, requiring fewer vehicle to get things to their destinations. Pidgeon gives special mention to the one at Port of Tilbury, which she thinks could be a departure point for more freight being sent up the Thames to locations such as the Vauxhall/Nine Elms redevelopment site.



It may be that, as ever with allotting priority on London’s roads, an element of swings, roundabouts, small steps and pragmatic compromises can’t be kept out of this debate. While there is clearly is a case for incentives to spread traffic flow in general more evenly throughout the day, Central London residents might, for example, still object to job lots of baked beans, broccoli and beer being unload to their local Spar beneath their windows before sunrise, even if the juggernauts that carried them purred rather than roared to the kerb and the men shifting them used sign language and walked on tiptoe.



“The problem with striking, sweeping, single policies is that although they highlight things that matter, in practice they’re often difficult to deliver,” observes Leam. “There are always so many different factors to consider. Whoever the next mayor is will have to deal with that.” Sigh.

