Heavy lorries have been banned from thousands of kilometres of local roads in Leicestershire in a bid to improve the lives of rural communities.
In what the county council is calling a ‘UK first’, drivers of lorries exceeding 7.5t, whether loaded or unloaded, will be forced to stay on motorways, trunk roads, and A and B roads. This would mean keeping traffic on the M1, M6, M42 and M69, and using the major network routes until they were at their destination.
The police will enforce the ban using London congestion charge-style automatic number plate-recognition technology, at a cost of £60,000 to Leicestershire to detect offenders on ‘rat-run’ routes. Cllr Nicholas Rushton, the county’s cabinet member for highways and transportation, said: ‘This project has environmental benefits for residents and helps reduce the cost of maintaining and repairing minor rural roads.’ The county was working with satellite-navigation system suppliers to ensure lorry-drivers were fully informed about the restrictions. Inspector Rod Hockin, of Leicestershire police’s ANPR department, said: ‘We are working with the council to ensure we target areas of Leicestershire where breaches of the regulations are taking place. We want to work with road hauliers to provide safer communities for all.’
The council’s lorry-control strategy was completed in March and officially launched last week. The 7.5t weight restrictions on certain roads follow a decision by the council in the early 1990s to select a network of routes for through-movements, while banning ‘rat-run’ lorries elsewhere. Since then, a series of weight restrictions has been introduced across the county, with the final one being implemented in Bottesford. The council has kept all A and B roads available for all traffic, but has restricted other roads in rural areas, where possible. This meant that a number of B roads in the west of Leicestershire were downgraded. Improved signing advising of the restrictions has also been put up across the county to help lorries keep on appropriate routes.
A spokesman for the Freight Transport Association agreed with the principle of the idea but wondered how if it could work effectively. He said: HGVs must have access to where they are collecting from or delivering. ‘Clearly, a carpet ban on all minor roads can’t work.’ Previously, the council’s trading standards department enforced lorry restrictions, but detection rates of offenders were not high because they relied on reports from the public.
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