This was not so much Project Fear as Project Oh Dear. Contingency plans for a No Deal lorry log-jam at Dover were being road-tested – quite literally – on the approaches to our busiest Channel port yesterday.
Half the expected trucks failed to appear while many of the participating hauliers dismissed it as ‘a joke’.
The exercise achieved a rare outbreak of harmony between prominent Remainers and Brexiteers, with both sides condemning it as ‘a waste of time’.
Under Operation Brock, if there is future disruption at the Channel ports, up to 6,000 lorries will be directed to wait at Manston. From there, they will be released in batches to make their way to Dover
None the less, the people with the clipboards and the hi-vis bibs were very pleased with their dry run on the roads between a new standby lorry park at the disused Manston airport and the gates of the ferry terminal at Dover 20 miles away.
A Downing Street spokesman said the Prime Minister was ‘satisfied’ with the result.
The trials had involved a fleet of purely British trucks with British drivers, none of whom was actually carrying any loads. Nor did any of them enter the port of Dover, let alone trouble Passport Control.
The Department for Transport had hoped for a sample of 150 trucks and had offered a going rate of £500 a lorry.
However, this being a busy working day after a long holiday period, the haulage industry could rustle up only 86.
In Dover, there was the faintly bizarre sight of a convoy of trucks descending the hill to the port, reaching the main roundabout, performing a U-turn and driving back up the hill. The fleet then repeated the exercise at 11am
Given that Dover handles 10,000 lorry movements a day at busy times of the year, statisticians might argue that yesterday’s exercise was not a wholly realistic sample.
‘A complete waste of time and taxpayer’s money,’ chuckled lorry driver Bob Dowle, 52, as he stopped for a bacon sandwich on the A256 afterwards.
‘It’s been a nice easy day for me. I even got a lie-in. I usually start at 4.30am but today I could sleep until 6am. But this won’t have taught anyone anything.’
That was certainly the prevailing view among the other drivers parked up at the M&N Snackbar near Sandwich (£3.50 for bacon, sausage and eggs).
We WERE a bunch of local drivers, fresh as a daisy after a weekend off,’ said Peter Williams, 48, another HGV veteran taking part in the trial.
‘Just you wait until you’ve got thousands of drivers turning up, most of them foreign, at the end of a long trip. There will be crashes all over the place.’
To be fair to the Department for Transport and Kent County Council, the primary purpose of the exercise was not to create ‘No Deal’ hell on the roads of Kent.
It was, specifically, to test a new freight overflow scheme at Manston – or ‘Kent International Airport’, as some road signs still
