Rail freight and road hauliers are competing

If the A9 can be dualled, why not tracks too, asks David Spaven

IHAVE a lot of time for Phil Flanders of the Road Haulage Association (Friends of The Scotsman, 3 January). Over many years he has proved himself a principled advocate of road haulage, and put a lot of effort into promoting greater use of rail for the trunk haul by road hauliers. But his argument for raising lorry speed limits to 50mph on single-carriageway sections of the A9 leaves fundamental questions – on competition and safety – unanswered.

The key issue is, of course, safety. And the website of the A9 Safety Group (whose members include the RHA, the Freight Transport Association and Police Scotland) states unambiguously that “retaining the 40mph speed limit is the safest option”. The group’s research concluded that the combination of safety cameras and a 50mph limit for lorries would reduce A9 fatal accidents by 27 per cent – but keeping the limit at 40mph would cut the death toll by 36 per cent. The same pattern applied with serious and slight injury accidents, with the 40mph limit achieving significantly better safety outcomes than 50mph.

So why has the RHA been pressing – successfully – for 50mph? The clue lies perhaps in Mr Flanders’ admission that 50mph will be “good for business”. Over the long haul from Central Scotland to Inverness, the increased speed limit on singlecarriageway sections may allow lorry journey times to be cut sufficiently to achieve an out-and-back delivery in a single driver’s shift where this is not currently possible. That is potentially much more significant for competition with rail than his dismissive reference to “marginal increases in road haulage efficiency”.

Currently, virtually every train between Perth and Inverness has to spend time sitting in one or more crossing loops waiting for an oncoming train – because no fewer than two-thirds of the 118-mile route is still single-track. Contrast the A9, where a lorry can make an uninterrupted journey from Central Scotland to Inverness on a road that was completely rebuilt in the 1980s.