ROUTES FOR HEAVY LORRIES

The Government is seeking to reduce the environmental damage caused by heavy lorries by making lorries themselves less objectionable, by keeping lorries away from places where they have no business to be and where they are most harmful and by ensuring that the maximum sensible use is made of other modes of transport. This paper is concerned with the problems of keeping heavy lorries as far as possible to a national network of roads suitable for them. More road construction and improvement is needed before such a system can be brought into full operation, but the need for such a network was fundamental to the setting of priorities in the road programme and it is not too soon to take decisions on how the system should be implemented. Indeed, the timescale on which local authorities are preparing their lorry plans makes it desirable to decide on the national system as soon as possible - local arrangements must fit into each other and into the national scheme. The basic problems which this paper sets out to consider and on which it invites comments are: the relationship between nationally and locally designated routes, and how to ensure that all the local schemes are compatible; what lorries should be subject to the national system of controls which is set up as the answer to iii. and iv. below; how to keep such lorries to a defined national network during the long distance journeys; how to ensure that on leaving such a network they do not use unsuitable roads, either for transit or parking; how to cope with access to premises which are not served by roads suitable for heavy lorries; quantifing the extra transport consts involved, including the cost of fuel. In dealing with these problems central and local government have distinct, but complementary, roles.

• Corporate Authors:

  Department of the Environment, England

  2 Marsham Street
  London SW1P 3EB,   England 
• Publication Date: 1974

Media Info

• Pagination: 8 p.

Subject/Index Terms

• TRT Terms: Costs; Defects; Environmental impacts; Heavy vehicles; Highways; Planning; Routes; Trucks
• Uncontrolled Terms: Highway damage
• Subject Areas: Environment; Finance; Highways; Motor Carriers; Operations and Traffic Management; Planning and Forecasting;

Filing Info

• Accession Number: 00072186
• Record Type: Publication
• Source Agency: Transportation Systems Center
• Files: TRIS
• Created Date: Apr 21 1976 12:00AM