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UK TRANSPORT secretary Ruth Kelly, (pictured), may have turned her attention to shipping’s inclusion into carbon trading schemes, but it is her recent foray into road signs that has riled an already angry mob of hauliers.
Kelly has announced an £89.5m ($175m) project to install electronic signs on the A14, that links Felixstowe and nearby ports with the Midlands and the north. This, she said, reflected the government’s commitment to promote economic growth and to improve safety.
Older readers may remember the road’s main predecessor, the A45, that earned the nickname of the “longest lane in England” as it wound through Cambridge and many smaller towns. Due to container traffic to and from the ports and the growth of the science industry around Cambridge, the A14 suffers from even more congestion at peak times.
The Department of Transport explains that incident detection sensors give drivers more time to take other routes. But hauliers argue that the money would be better spent on widening the dual carriageway from two lanes to three in each direction and turning it into a proper motorway. They hate nothing more than the diversions that follow incidents.
Evens stevens
IN THE annual stand-off between container lines and their customers during this year’s transpacific contract negotiations, a major ocean carrier was the first to blink.
That’s the word on the street as lines lick their wounds after another bruising encounter. Retail giant WalMart rebuffed a concerted effort by ocean carriers to lift freight rates for US import cargo, and emerged the winner of this year’s tussle.
That set the benchmark, leaving other lines smarting over this breaking of the ranks. However, their determination to secure floating surcharges for bunker costs paid off, with most shippers able in future to share the burden of massive fuel prices.
Not over until ink is dried
IF LINES failed to obtain the level of freight increases they were seeking on the Pacific, they have other reasons to be cheerful, or at least cautiously upbeat.
Negotiations between the employers’ group Pacific Maritime Association and the International Longshore and Warehouse union, on a new employment contract, appear to be proceeding smoothly.
That is in stark contrast to the position six years ago when relations between the two sides collapsed, and US west coast ports were shut for 10 days, bringing chaos to deliveries across the country that took months to clear up.
So far, talks are progressing cordially, Lloyd’s List understands, with fingers crossed that a deal can be reached by mid-summer.
But insiders stress that the situation remains highly delicate, and that there are no hard and fast guarantees that this constructive state of affairs will last right up until the ink has dried.
Could it be a repeat of the freight negotiations, with employers (in this case ocean carriers and terminal operators) blinking first?
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