Traffic Management through the Villages

A large number of non local HGVs use roads in the South Area of North Somerset unnecessarily in preference to better and SWRA recommended freight routes. This is an issue on which CPRE believes that the Council must listen to the South Area Parishes and Action Groups and properly balance the interests of some hauliers with the loss of rural quality of life for the many residents and communities.

Campaigning under the name of Traffic Management for The Villages (TMTV), seven Parish Councils, The Mendip Society and Action groups in the South Area of North Somerset, including CPRE, have been working for over 5 years to persuade the Council to implement HGV management. This management would redirect non delivering/collecting HGV’s onto the recommended freight routes. Our CPRE HGV volunteer, a retired engineer, continues to play a leading role, attends frequent meetings with the Council and prepares detailed reports to support TMTV’s lobbying for the large number of residents in the communities of the South Area.

TMTV traffic surveys show that, although the number of HGVs passing through the area is increasing, the recommended freight routes offer real and practical alternatives. A fourteen week closure of the B3134 though Burrington Combe demonstrated that during this period HGV’s chose to use the other routes available.

In July 2006, Somerset County Council (SCC) carried out an origin and destination survey on the A368/ B3134 and surprisingly for them, proved that what TMTV had been saying was true and that only 25% of the HGV’s were delivering in the vicinity of these roads. By choosing unreasonable criteria, SCC attempted to show the opposite. This was because by defining as ‘local’ any journey that starts or ends within 10 miles of the selected section of the A368 (eg Portbury to Portsmouth) SCC attempted to conclude that 80% of HGVs using the A368/B3134 were ‘local’.