About 1,500 lorries are stuck in Kent after France imposed a ban on any accompanied freight or cargo entering the country from Britain because of the new coronavirus variant discovered in the UK. The move triggered government crisis plans at Dover and other major pinch points, with some drivers redirected to a nearby airfield to ease congestion on the roads
France’s 48-hour ban on freight hauliers from Britain came as a surprise, the UK transport secretary has admitted, amid expected chaos at British ports. But Grant Shapps said the disruption would not cause food and medicine shortages in the short term because other freight routes remain available
Continue reading...Transport secretary says UK aims to resolve issue ‘as soon as possible’ amid fears over new Covid strain
France’s 48-hour ban on freight hauliers from Britain was “surprising”, the UK transport secretary has said, amid expected chaos at British ports.
Although Grant Shapps said the disruption was not a “specific problem” in regards to food and medicine shortages in the short term, the government’s aim was to “get this resolved as soon as possible”.
Continue reading...Critics say plan for third runway runs counter to UK’s legally binding target of net zero emissions by 2050
The government faces a legal challenge over its plan to expand Heathrow airport, with lawyers and environmentalists demanding it review its policy in line with its commitment to net-zero emissions by 2050.
The Good Law Project, a not-for-profit organisation with a focus on public interest cases including environmentalism and tackling poverty, argues that the government must update its plan for a third runway to take into account the emissions pledge it made following the approval for the airport expansion in June 2018.
Continue reading...Retailers and manufactures demand action after delays caused by pandemic and Brexit
Retailers and food and drinks companies have called for MPs to launch an urgent inquiry into disruption at British ports, with delays to goods deliveries possibly set to last for months.
The delays mean consumers may have to pay higher Christmas prices and companies may be unable to build up stockpiles of goods to see them through Brexit disruption, the retail and food and drinks industry warned, in a letter to the chairs of parliament’s transport and international trade committees.
Continue reading...Most private providers are unable to offer the service, which should have cut quarantine from to 10 days to five
The UK government’s long-awaited test to release scheme, designed to allow travellers to cut quarantine, was embroiled in chaos on its first day of operation after the last-minute publication of 11 private providers, most of whom appeared unable to offer the service on Tuesday morning.
Airports, many of which have had testing centres in place for weeks or months, were perplexed at being left off the Department for Transport’s approved list, as they reported a surge in bookings in the run-up to the festive season.
Continue reading...Heavy rain has hampered work on site intended to relieve queues around Dover from 1 January
The Kent lorry park designed to relieve queues of up to 7,000 trucks taking goods across the Channel will not be ready for Brexit on 1 January, it has emerged.
Damian Green, the MP for Ashford, said the government told him rain had hampered work on the site between the villages of Sevington and Mersham, fuelling fears of traffic queues around the county for the first two months of the year.
Continue reading...London Underground cleaning staff are on the frontline of the fight against the coronavirus, but are among the lowest paid workers, writes Mike Cash, RMT general secretary
Sean Smith has done a great service to your readers by bringing into the daylight the hidden labour of those who have worked every day to keep the London underground clean through the pandemic (‘Unsung heroes’: cleaners keeping London’s transport Covid-safe – photo essay, 10 December).
He is right to spot that they are among the lowest-paid workers. London underground cleaning is outsourced to a company called ABM. The cleaners do not receive the same pension provision as their Transport for London counterparts and they are not entitled to free travel on the network they clean. Their workloads have soared as the company has cut back their numbers every year since the contract began, leaving them desperately overstretched during the pandemic.
Continue reading...Capital’s mayor asks TfL to begin feasibility study for plan to raise £500m a year
Drivers could face a £3.50 daily charge to enter Greater London under proposals from the mayor of London to address the capital’s funding crisis.
Sadiq Khan has asked Transport for London to start feasibility studies for the plan to raise £500m a year.
Continue reading...Police and officials maintain presence at mass trespass after bypass approved
More than 100 protesters have staged a trespass at Stonehenge to raise concerns over plans for a two-mile tunnel underneath the world heritage site.
Last month the transport secretary, Grant Shapps, approved the £1.7bn project, which will include eight miles of extended dual carriageway along the A303 in Wiltshire.
Continue reading...Most Britons see their car as more important now and would not choose greener alternative
The pandemic has put back attitudes to driving versus public transport by two decades, with almost two-thirds of UK car owners now considering their vehicle essential, research has found.
A clear majority would now refuse to switch to a greener alternative even if better trains or buses were available, according to the RAC. The research for its annual Report on Motoring found reluctance to use public transport was now at its highest for 18 years.
Continue reading...Ancient artefacts will be lost when tunnel for A303 is built near site, campaigners claim
It has been bitterly debated for the past three decades, but the latest plans to partly bury the A303 in a tunnel beside Stonehenge may this week finally get approval from transport secretary Grant Shapps.
The £2.4bn scheme – which will see the traffic-choked road to the west country widened into a dual carriageway near the ancient site before shooting down a two-mile tunnel – has pitted archaeologists, local campaigners and even the nation’s druids against the combined might of Highways England, English Heritage and the National Trust.
Continue reading...Richard Browning is pursuing the stuff of a million childhood dreams. But having built a working jetpack, will anybody use it?
On a gloomy afternoon in a Sussex wood, a 21st-century superhero appears. Dressed in black, helmeted, a pack on his back and jets on his arms, he rises to a couple of metres above the ground, accelerates up above a grassy bank and then hovers in a swirling cloud of autumn leaves.
No matter how many times you’ve watched a video on YouTube, nothing can quite prepare you for the sight of a human being in flight. It is the embodiment of a thousand myths, from Hermes and Peter Pan to Iron Man, as well as a million childhood dreams, and is the only correct answer to that old conundrum: which superpower would you choose, invisibility or flying? If it wasn’t for the roar of the jet engines and the smell of fuel, you would assume it was just a dream.
Continue reading...Government backs down on demands for fare increases in significant win for Sadiq Khan
Transport for London (TfL) has secured a bailout from the government worth about £1.8bn just a fortnight after Boris Johnson said Sadiq Khan had “effectively bankrupted” the tube and bus service in the capital.
In a significant win for the London mayor, the government has backed down on demands for fare increases, an extension of the congestion zone to cover the entire city and the scrapping of free fares for children and over-60s.
Continue reading...Government plans set to start in 2021 risk lives and are ‘hugely wrong’, experts say
Plans for cars to drive themselves on UK motorways as soon as 2021 are unlikely to go ahead after insurers warned government proposals were risking lives and “hugely wrong”.
Cars with the technology to keep in lane, accelerate and brake automatically will be on the road next year, and ministers had proposed that drivers could relinquish control to their vehicles at speeds of up to 70mph on motorways.
Continue reading...Study measured financial impact of car emissions on deaths, health and lost working days in 432 urban areas
The health costs of air pollution from roads are higher in London than any other city in Europe, a study has found.
Two other urban areas in the UK, Manchester and the West Midlands, have the 15th and 19th highest costs respectively among the 432 European cities analysed.
Continue reading...Reports of rare bat species in ancient woodland being cleared for high-speed rail line
Lawyers have warned HS2 it might be felling trees illegally, after an ecology report found evidence of one of the UK’s rarest bat species in an area of ancient woodland being cleared for the high-speed rail line.
Legal firm Leigh Day has written to HS2 Ltd urging the company to halt activity at Jones’ Hill wood, near Wendover in Buckinghamshire, as it does not have a licence to carry out work that could disturb rare barbastelle bat roosts. They say to continue doing so could be a criminal offence.
Continue reading...They may be a common sight, but privately owned motorised scooters are still illegal on Britain’s roads and pavements. But with rental scheme trials taking place across the country, could they be answer to getting to work in the pandemic?
Standing upright, you glide, ghostlike, along the street. You have no emissions. You are alone, outside, unlikely to catch anything or pass anything on. You are no burden to the public transport system, nor do you contribute much to congestion. You take up little space.
Now you join a busier road, one with buses. Perhaps you feel small, vulnerable. But when the traffic bunches up and stops, you can pass. Ha! This is the future of urban travel, isn’t it? Make that the present: it is here, you are here, going somewhere else quickly, with a smile. You are also breaking the law.
Continue reading...Tyre attachment designed by four students aims to reduce road transport pollution
A device that captures microplastic particles from tyres as they are emitted – and could help reduce the devastating pollution they cause – has won its designers a James Dyson award.
The Tyre Collective, a group of masters students from Imperial College London and the Royal College of Art, scooped the UK prize of the international competition with their solution for the growing environmental scourge of tyre wear caused by road transport.
Continue reading...Local route managers and signallers will be given more power to cut speeds or close lines
Heavy rain could lead to more trains being cancelled or told to travel at low speed in future, following the Stonehaven crash that killed three people in Aberdeenshire last month.
An interim report by Network Rail into the tragedy spelled out strengthened procedures that could hasten line closures in bad weather, pending safety inspections.
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