At the moment (and, as far as I can tell, until the end of time), night is needed for maintenance and development. And, sensibly, there are restrictions on traffic movements during the night to minimise noise.
In the era when railways were big in freight carriage, the delivery from rail freight depot to customer was by horse and cart.
Indeed, It was privately owned lorries 'door to door' ability that won favour over rail, plus they could accept / refuse any load wheras until the mid late 20th century, the railways were legally obliged to carry ANYTHING they were offered under the common carrier law.
It's difficult enough to get some retailers to let me get the last leg done by friendly cycling or bike-respecting Royal Mail, DPD or APC, rather than bloody dangerous traffic-law-flouting Yodel or UPS. Now I'm supposed to try to get them to restock by rail?I'll ask but it's unlikely to work...
Just saying what I've seen locally. Not had DPD ignore cycles-only restrictions and nearly kill me, or block junctions, unlike Yodel.
But what then? You have lorries driving into London to pickup at stations to drop to final destination? Might as well just bring the lorries in.
Anyone else think it's surprisingly short-sighted that there don't appear to be any freight elevators on the Crossrail route? Surely it won't need 24 trains/hour capacity for passengers all through the night? The feeder lines link to so many docks - I think including one they reinstated to take some of the dirt out.
Disagree. I get many deliveries per day at work. Lorries come. As I'm at the north end of central London we often get early drop off before 10 am. It takes them a while as the lorries are full. Smaller lorries just means more of them. Maybe that's better but again not so sure v
I'm afraid you're both wrong - and here's why.
I bet you if I trained and drove one of these lorries I could do it without killing cyclists. It's the driver.
this is a disgraceful thing, but it's not really just about the window. It's about the attitude. And I saw the same thing happen today just south of Liverpool Street, and, yes, it was exactly the same type of truck.
Can you imagine a car design being allowed that doesn't let the driver look below 3m in that direction?
it the culture within construction that allows designers (be they Architects, Civil Engineers or Structural Engineers) to forget about injuries and deaths off site, that allows contractors not to submit risk assessments for transport as opposed to just deliveries, that allows the HSE to say 'nothing to do with us, guv and that allows companies like Thames Materials on the road because the designers don't say 'you must not employ these people'. It goes from top to bottom, and the only way to stop it is via the Contract. Quite how the Mayor gets to sort this out remains to be seen, but my hope is that every planning permission will come with a condition that requires all hauliers to pass a test of some sort to get on an approved list, and that some clever lawyer sees fit to launch an action on behalf of the relatives of a person killed by a tipper lorry not just at the lorry driver, but at the designers who failed to do their job.
