Action Against Overnight Parking?
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FOLLOWING complaints on the matter by tenants of an attractively planned housing estate, a provincial council is expected to take action against habitual overnight parking of laden commercial vehicles on its roads. Damage to kerbs and pathways, and nuisance in other respects, is alleged. Police in the area are understood to have been consulted and to be taking a census of similar cases, including passenger vehicles, in other parts of the county.
The particular vehicles to which the original complaint relates are stated to be left regularly outside the driver's' homes and to be owned by one operator with depot facilities that appear totally inadequate for the size of his fleet. An association official in a neighbouring city commented that no haulier could be regarded as a properly qualified member of the industry if he failed to equip himself with the tools of his trade, including suitable vehicle accommodation. The type of owner who told his drivers to find their own overnight parking space when they were on their own home ground was obviously a potential rate-cutter, he added.
Parking of commercial vehicles on roads adjacent to transport cafés has previously been the subject of police atten tion. In these circumstances the trade organizations seem to have taken the view that the duty of anyone setting up to be a transport caterer is to provide off-the-road parking facilities and not to permit hazards to traffic to arise in consequence of vans or lorries being left on the road.
Change-over Increase An increase in the use of the changeover system for long-distance drivers has given rise to other protests regarding long-term parking of lorries in residential districts. Normally employers arrange for the exchange to be made at a garage or transport café, but for their own reasons it happens that some drivers fix their meeting points to suit themselves. At one commercial pull-in, which has been severely affected by loss of traffic to the motorways, a member of the staff said the country was only just beginning to realize that roads were roads and residential areas were residential areas. There was no reason why the public at large should pay to provide intermediate stations for the haulage industry, he added, especially when space specifically intended for the purpose was being inadequately employed.