COMMUNITY ACTIVIST Chris Savill is not anticipating winning any awards from charm schools or diplomatic attaches but that doesn’t mean he is wrong.
For quite some time, Chris has been concerned about the intensity of lorry traffic in his home neighbourhood of South Ockendon.
Last week, a burst waterpipe saw a large section of South Road cut off. This meant that all traffic had to wind it’s way around the houses before linking up with Tamarisk Road.
Chris believes that the waterpipe burst was caused by HGV’s weakening the road
Chris said: “This is proof in the pudding that the amount of HGV’s illegally using this weight restricted road has weakened the road structure and caused this catastrophe.
“What will it be like if another 200 per day is allowed?
“The village has been cut off for through traffic for two days now and traffic re routed through Orchard Road/Tamarisk Road. You can imagine the mayhem for these roads, especially Tamarisk with its little chicanes each 100 yards!
“South Road, North Road, West Road’s are no longer suitable for HGV Traffic of the calibre that is now!
“This incident is the tip of the iceberg. People in South Road are paying the price with flooded rooms.”
YourThurrock took its camera along the diverted route. It is clear that there is very little room for the lorries. What is not seen is the amount of traffic in the country roads around Ockendon. Even an experienced driver will be concerned as the lorries thunder down the lanes and encroach onto the oncoming traffic.
You had an easy time getting through here Michael! Most days were atrocious!
This road damage is a result of HGV’S continuosly thundering along this 7.5 ton weight restriction! Ever increasing road traffic from the M25 back traffic as well!
STILL NOT POLICED BY AUTHORITIES (WHO KEEP PASSING THE BUCK)
By the way! Where was the narrative in the film!
If the roads were built to a totaly better standard this wouldnt happen, also the age of the pipework down there can also be a factor, earth movements caused by nature as well.
I am a lorry driver we face endless problems along our routes which can cause us to divert and we are sometimes diverted through wieght restricted roads, however i do understand here its not the case.
I have driven on the continent mainly germany alot of sections of the older autobahns are still there from when hitler in the 1930’s commissioned the roads, and theres not an ounce of tarmac on them.
What im getting at is simple build an entire area dedicated for industrial useage and force the people such as eddie stobart to move to the new location and have once access route in and out its the only way you can physically deal with this.
Yes HGV traffic maybe to blame because you only see the maximum wieght of 44tonnes in your head in reality the axles displace the wieght putting a maximum of 8 tones on the road (a single deck bus puts down the same wieght as a fully loaded 44tonne lorry simple because it has 2 axles and we generally have 5 or 6)
but yes it is a problem you have width restrictions chicanes are another option for you but that will cause you more grief in the long run with all the cars that go through there, 200 lorries a day? you probably have 2000 cars go through the same stretch per day a chicane or width restriction is going to cause you chaos.