Scary- fifty lorries a day in West End to carry Crossrail spoil

Documents reveal today how routes including Oxford Street, Shaftesbury Avenue, Tottenham Court Road and Marylebone Road will be affected by the construction work.
The lorries will transport earth from central sites including Bond Street Station, Hanover Square, Newman Street, Oxford Street, Charing Cross Road and Goslett Yard. There are also major sites at Westbourne Park, Royal Oak and Paddington. Lorries will travel west along Harrow Road to the North Circular.
The routes link the sites to main arterial roads, such as the A40. Other roads head to the Thames, where boats will take over. The earth will be used at locations such as the 1,500-acre nature reserve at Wallasea Island, Essex. Tunnelling will take place from 2011 to 2014, and 7.3million square metres of earth weighing five million tonnes will be excavated. Work will be from 8am until 6pm. The report for Westminster's planning department says the lorry routes will "affect quality of life".

http://www.thisislondon.co.uk/standard/article-23766435-50-lorries-a-day-in-west-end-to-take-crossrail-earth-away.do

Turning to the issues of lorries, Inspector Aspinall told the meeting about a day of City of London spot checks on HGVs, carried out on 30 September 2008 as part of the Europe-wide Operation Mermaid, which is intended to step up levels of enforcement of road safety laws in relation to lorries.

On this one day, 12 lorries were stopped randomly by City Police.

Five of those lorries were involved in the construction work for the 2012 Olympics.

All of the twelve lorries were breaking the law in at least one way.

** Repeat: a 100 per cent criminality rate among small random sample of HGVs on the streets of central London. **

The offences range included overweight loads (2 cases), mechanical breaches (5 cases), driver hours breaches (5 cases), mobile phone use while driving (2 cases), driving without insurance (2 cases) and no operator license (1 case).

http://www.movingtargetzine.com/article/city-of-london-police-road-safety-forum

Hardly inspires confidence does it? That's mental, all of the 12 HGVs were illegal. The two with no insurance would be the fuckers that would end up flattening some-one.

Kinda counter productive to the HGV saftey schemes, bringing a whole load of more HGV's to the crampted central London area is going to be a hassle, with the few expected un-cyclist-aware drivers out there. Although im not saying that we should get rid of the HGV's, i'm just saying this means there are more people to educate (which is both good and bad).
That 100% criminality rate from that sample of Randoms is kinda scary too, although loads of people are constanly breaking the law and not getting caught, or even realis themselves.

wasn't there a proposal to use the old Royal Mail railway under london to get rid of the spoil rather than dealing with more sodding trucks?

woah, i had no idea that mailrail existed. wicked.

... Although im not saying that we should get rid of the HGV's ...

I don't know why that is such a mad idea.

Can they not do this after hours?

I don't know why that is such a mad idea.

+1

So the year after they open the cycle hire scheme for business they load up central London with extra lorries (50 a day will be an average). What is this, a cull?

construction doesn't have the infrastructure or the money to shift transport away from HGVs and on to rail networks, we are, unfortunately, very much dependant on our roads.

woah, i had no idea that mailrail existed. wicked.

Poor RailMail though:

'30 May 2003

A sad day for all, MailRail ceases operation today. Rest in peace, MailRail.'

construction doesn't have the infrastructure or the money to shift transport away from HGVs and on to rail networks, we are, unfortunately, very much dependant on our roads.

Sadly very true.

It's a shame that we can't use our canals more.

It's fair enough really, crossrail needs to happen, it will benefit so many people, and the soil needs to go somehow, and hgv is simply the best way. You might say rail or canal, but how is it going to get there in the first place. Obviously it's not great for cyclists, but we are only a small subsection of the general population.

Yeah I agree, I think the idea of compulsory special mirrors fitted to HGVs would be far better than a ban and would go a long way to reducing left-hook fatalites.

How's about a deal where the direct beneficiaries of the 'dirt shift' sponsor ads aimed at cyclists going down the left of HGVs? as well as repealing the exemption that the older [strike] death tra[/strike] models of HGVs have in relation to the newer mirrors.

wasn't there a proposal to use the old Royal Mail railway under london to get rid of the spoil rather than dealing with more sodding trucks?

the downside is that the Mail Rail is probably too small (and the train run on narrow gauge railway, smaller than the standard gauge railway) to haul all the earth, plus the problem of redesign the train, how to bring it down to the station, etc.

other solution is bringing it to the Thames and transport it via river, or even the canal.

Can they not do this after hours?

Sound solution expect people do live in Central London, as if the traffic is loud enough in rush hour, being awaken by HGV thundering by isn't the best of idea, especially with the Daily Mail mentality of the people.

So the year after they open the cycle hire scheme for business they load up central London with extra lorries (50 a day will be an average). What is this, a cull?

You have to think about the long game here.

The introduction of Crossrail will reduce the amount of traffic running on London's streets so in the long term this is a very good thing to have done.

On top of that they seem to be publishing a list of expected routes to be used by Crossrail construction traffic, which means that cyclists will have an opportunity to avoid them. Also, 50 large vehicles isn't a lot on London's roads so even on those routes, the odds of seeing one is fairly low. I would imagine that they'll avoid the main rush hours for their own benefits at least.

We can also use this to our advantage. For this kind of contruction traffic, which is directly linked to the GLA and TfL then it's an ideal opportunity for a safety campaign. We can now pretty much demand any reasonable safety measures we like and should get them because if we cause enough fuss now with a very visible campaign then they will definitely not want to have anything close to an allegation of driver at fault. After that you can use the de facto policy as a definition of best practice to approach any other HGV companies with and the GLA & Tfl will have pretty much no choice but to back us.

Also AlexB there are so many other things going on that they don't have the time to think about who will be effected. Sad really.