Having campaigned for years against road transit traffic, T&E member organisation The Alpine Initiative asked 50 lorry drivers what exactly they were transporting through Switzerland's Gotthard road tunnel. The answers ranged from car tyres, disposable nappies and felt, to cigarette filters and even caps for toothpaste tubes.
‘The road haulage industry has often justified itself by saying we need roads for just-in-time products,’ said The Alpine Initiative’s general manager Alf Arnold, ‘but few of the products we found need to reach their destination within a tight timeframe, so could easily go by more environmentally sound means. No-one can now claim that the 1.3 million lorries that thunder through Switzerland each year couldn’t at least be halved.’
