They are over 25 metres long and have up to 60 tonnes of weight, 2 tonnes more than a passenger Boeing 737-300. They are the “monster trucks”, also known as longer and heavier vehicles, mega-trucks or Eurocombi, the vehicles that the profile industry is slowly trying to impose for heavy weight or dangerous goods transport. A lot of names, but the same vehicle which finds opponents in over 70% of Europeans, based on several studies published on the website of the NO Mega-Trucks campaign which supports the railway freight transport as the single viable alternative.
Scandinavia says“yes” to mega-trucks
Currently, mega-trucks are running in Scandinavia, in Finland and Sweden, but they are not allowed to perform cross-border traffic because of their extreme tonnage. Several countries have decided to say “yes” to mega-trucks. Among them Belgium, Denmark, Germany and the Netherlands. Actually, mega-trucks are currently being tested in the last three countries.
“We demand the Danish Minister and Government to persuade other EU member states to permit the mega-trucks in Europe. They are pointless if they have to turn back at border crossings”, declared Mogens Therkelsen, President of the International Transport Denmark (ITD).
However, recently, on August 6, the response to an opinion poll of regional transport companies on the question of using longer and heavier vehicles, carried out by the University of Applied Sciences in Erfurt, was unequivocal: over 90% of the 247 regional road hauliers saw no need in using longer vehicles.
“This level of clarity is new,” said Martin Roggermann, the coordinator of the EU wide campaign alliance NO Mega Trucks. “Up until now we thought that mega trucks were environmentally damaging, dangerous and expensive for taxpayers. Now we learnt that LHVs are not even particularly popular among road transport companies”, Roggermann said.
The Erfurt study has shown that longer and heavier trucks only fulfil the interests of a few large road transport companies. Apart from that, the report offers nothing new. The fact that LHVs – under ideal test conditions – can save fuel and cut the number of journeys is just a naïve calculation that does not add up in the everyday world of nation-wide transportation.
The NO Mega Trucks Alliance has found the support of the European railway sector, with the example of the Community of European Railway and Infrastructure Companies (CER) and Allianz pro Schiene.
The companies support the idea that the introduction of mega-trucks would severely affect the railway freight transport and intermodal transport, as well as the railway industry. Lately the federal state of North Rhine-Westphalia announced not to join the nation-wide trial of mega trucks planned for the start of 2011. The federal state of Thuringia recently also decided against participating in the tests. Now that more and more German states are rejecting test trials of mega trucks in their territory, it is becoming less likely that Germany’s
federal transport ministry will be able to push through its plans of a nation-wide trial. In Denmark and the Netherlands supporters of mega trucks are urging to extend the use of longer, heavier trucks to other European countries. Kristian Pihl Lorentzen, a member of the Danish Parliament, recently demanded his fellow party member and Danish Minister of Transport Hans Christian Schmidt to lobby for an extension of the mega truck trials to Germany and other European countries.
Europeans say “no” to mega-trucks!
There have been discussions on the fact that, soon enough, the European Commission could consider permitting the introduction of mega-trucks in Europe. But the danger of mega-trucks has been intensely observed in most European countries and that is why the Commission is not considering any public debate on the topic. Moreover, the European commissioner for transport, Siim Kallas, has recently declared that the Commission demanded another two comprehensive studies referring to a potential impact of the mega-trucks on European roads which are heavily used compared to Scandinavian roads with little road traffic. Various opinion polls have been conducted in Europe on the people’s interest on mega-trucks and the results are encouraging because the Europeans’ answers prove that they are being aware of the negative effects of these mega-trucks once they would be free to run Europe-wide. Therefore, 81% of the France’s population is against mega-trucks, Switzerland is also 80% against, followed by 75% of the British citizens and the Germans with 73% of people saying “no” to mega-trucks.
by Elena Ilie
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