ABSTRACT
In recent years new areas of research have often encumbered themselves with a complex language derived largely from American sociological studies of the 1950s and 1960s. Some urban goods-movement (UGM) researchers at the moment seem to be set on the same course. UGM has become an important area of research precisely because it has become a political issue. The government was also rushed into planning a national lorry route network. The need for action led to the need for research, and thus there was instituted a government-funded programme of research, the general objective of which could be said to be the identification of areas in which government could make a contribution to the reduction of the generalised social costs of UGM, and the assessment of the benefits and disbenefits of intervention. The researchers’ role must surely be to investigate the present patterns of UGM, to discover why such patterns exist, and then to suggest pragmatic improvements.
