Gone, but not forgotten

A few months have passed.

Has the situation got any better? No, not really.

The promised review of the loading bay by the Council has failed to materialise, so it seems we are stuck with near permanent congestion outside the Tesco store in St Margarets.

This means we have juggernauts, vans and private cars parking in the extended loading bay, the bus stop, and on the double yellow lines. This happens throughout the day, and into the evening, causing traffic congestion, and constituting a major hazard to pedestrians crossing nearby roads.

Leaving aside the major quality of life concerns, there is the issue raised before about what it means in pure environmental terms to have these lorries coming into the centre of our village. Tesco is committed to putting more food onto its lorry fleet - ie it wants to deliver the most food with the minimum amount of drivers.

What this means is that the lorries we have will get bigger, not smaller - Transport 2000 says that a juggernaut has 10,000 times more impact on the road infrastructure than an average car. Infrastructure that will then have to be dug up, at local taxpayers expense, and replaced.

As the country's biggest retailer, Tesco is in a position to use "green" diesel in its lorry and van fleet, and to sell "green" diesel at its petrol stations. This diesel (known also as bio-diesel) is made from vegetable oil (Rudolph Diesel designed the diesel engine to run on peanut oil), so it is entirely carbon neutral. At the moment, most waste vegetable oil is mixed with animal feed. As well as the environmental benefits, it is also much cheaper than regular diesel, as the tax is only 20p per litre. Any diesel car, van or lorry can run bio-diesel, without harm or adjustment.

Obviously, the solution for areas where Tesco is placing its smaller stores is for Tesco to employ more drivers, driving smaller vans, all running bio-diesel - One side effect is that this will create more employment. It will not increase congestion, as the amount of road space will be roughly the same -

Tesco pays lip-service to the use of bio-diesel and other bio-fuels (http://www.tescocorporate.com/biofuels.htm), but it has the corporate clout to switch its own fleet to bio-diesel, and allow the rest of the country to do so.