No-deal Brexit rehearsal: 150 lorries to test traffic around Dover
In one of the first public displays of how life might change after March, there will be a major test of traffic around Dover.
By Adam Parsons, business correspondent
Monday morning will be a big day in the story of Brexit.
Not in Westminster, or Brussels, but in a windy corner of Kent.
There, at the disused Manston airfield, around 150 lorries are due to gather for a Brexit rehearsal. It will be one of the first public displays of how life might change in just under three months' time.
There are still signs pointing you towards the airfield marked as "Kent International", even though a plane has not landed here for more than four years.
There is a vociferous campaign to return it to aviation but, more pressingly, Manston is being eyed up as a lorry park.
Hence Monday's test.
First the lorries will be asked to meet for a 7am start, leave the airfield, drive down to Dover in the rush hour and then come back again. A couple of hours later, they will be asked to do it all over again.
The idea is to see whether it is possible to integrate a fleet of lorries into the traffic around Manston.
That is because there are plenty who fear that a "no-deal" Brexit would cause such delays at Dover that thousands of lorries would be backed up in all directions.
Thus one solution is to park a chunk of them, temporarily, at Kent's one-time airport.
Image:There are concerns about delays to deliveries if there is a no deal Brexit
There are two Government schemes to manage the volatile traffic in this bit of the world, both of which have names that sound like secret wartime projects.
Operation Brock is a plan to manage motorway traffic heading to Dover. Operation Fennel tries to take lorries off the motorways and put them onto other routes.
Both follow on from Operation Stack, which was not much more than a great long traffic jam. A few years ago the queue got to 30 miles, tempers frayed and the name "Operation Stack" was retired.
But talk to hauliers around Kent and they are intensely dubious as to whether these new schemes will fare any better.
Manston, they say, has poor access and will be brought to a halt by a single breakdown.
Brock will punish lorry drivers for sticking to the rules on taking breaks. And delays, many fear, are inevitable if no deal is done over customs clearance.
More than anything, when you talk to hauliers in Kent, you get exasperation.
"Two years to come up with an answer and they now want to use an airport as a lorry park," said one.
"And that'll fail," says another. "Total waste of time."
Image:Could this happen after Brexit? Trucks on the M20 during Operation Stack in July 2015
All this matters because so much of our life depends on the freight passing through Kent - our food, medicines, manufacturing supplies, furniture and just about everything else. Delays here would mean delays everywhere.
So on Monday we shall see this test, and perhaps learn of its conclusions.
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