MPs have challenged plans to build the world’s second-largest lorry park to ease road chaos in Kent when cross-Channel freight routes are disrupted. That is why up to £250m was made available to build a lorry park which could take lorries off the county’s roads in the event of disruption. “Ministers need to do more in order to justify this spending and it should do more to demonstrate why a lorry park roughly the size of Disneyland in California is better than the alternatives we heard about during our inquiry.”The committee’s report suggests only a lorry park in Qatar would be bigger than that currently proposed for Stanford. A figure of £250m loss a day to the UK economy has been cited by the Freight Transport Association (FTA) and others but is not thought reliable. The government has settled on a lorry park as the best solution but what they are proposing is on a vast scale and could cost up to quarter of a billion pounds.

Source: The Guardian May 31, 2016 22:52 UTC