Major Flaw Discovered in Rail Freight Proposals

A MAJOR flaw in the rail freight terminal proposal for Park Street has been exposed by local Lib Dems. Parliamentary candidate for St Albans, Sandy Walkington, has revealed the miscalculation of traffic movements to and from the site in a letter submitted

A MAJOR flaw in the rail freight terminal proposal for Park Street has been exposed by local Lib Dems.

Parliamentary candidate for St Albans, Sandy Walkington, has revealed the miscalculation of traffic movements to and from the site in a letter submitted to the inquiry, which was shown exclusively to the Herts Advertiser last week.

His colleague, David Parry, who is the chairman of the St Stephens Lib Dems, discovered that the likely traffic generation figures for Park Street have been generated by an extrapolation from actual vehicle movements at terminals in Daventry and Magna Park.

But both of these sites have far less warehousing storage space compared to the proposals for the former Radlett Airfield, which Mr Walkington and Mr Parry believe makes those estimations understated and flawed.

They claim the calculations have been carried out based on the square footage of warehousing space, but the proposed buildings at Park Street would be eight metres taller and will therefore have a far greater volume.

Mr Walkington requested that the inquiry was adjourned in light of the new information which inquiry inspector Andrew Mead declined to do.

But, Mr Walkington believes that he is taking the matter very seriously.

He said: "I am only a layman in these matters. But I do note that all data about warehousing talks in square footage rather than volume - it just seems to be taken for granted. The elephant has been in the corner and nobody has noticed it - until now."

For the full story read this week's Herts Advertiser.