Examination of Witnesses (Questions 477-479)
MR HOWARD
POTTER, MR
DEREK TURNER
CBE, MR JIM
COATES CB AND
MR MARTIN
RICHARDS OBE
26 JANUARY 2005
Q477 Chairman: Gentlemen,
good afternoon to you. May I ask you to identify yourselves for
the record?
Mr Richards: I
am Martin Richards, representing the Chartered Institute of Logistics
and Transport.
Mr Coates: My name is Jim Coates.
I chair a forum in that Institute which interests itself in this
problem.
Mr Turner: I am Derek Turner.
I am a former chairman of the Transport Board and an independent
consultant.
Mr Potter: Howard Potter, a Member
of the Institution of Civil Engineers Transport Board.[4]
Q478 Chairman: Does anyone
have anything they want to say to start or shall we go straight
to questions?
Mr Coates: Straight to questions.
Q479 Chairman: Is it impossible
to build our way out of congestion without limiting traffic growth?
Mr Coates: I think we would probably
agree with the evidence you had from most of the other witnesses
this afternoon that the answer to that is yes. My Institute would
agree with what a lot of other people have said, which is that
we do need some more road construction perhaps particularly at
junctions which tend to be the bottlenecks in the inter-urban
network. There is a problem in the urban areas, but there is a
limit to how much you can do by increasing the capacity of the
road network. Perhaps in the urban areas it is the capacity of
the public transport system that has to take the strain.
4 Note by witness: and Director of Transportation
Planning International, a firm of transport planning consultants. Back
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