Lorry drivers could get road ban for crashing into railway bridges
Graeme Paton, Transport Correspondent
Saturday September 04 2021, 12.01am, The Times
Negligent HGV drivers face being banned from the road because of concerns over the chaos caused by lorries hitting low railway bridges.
Licences could be revoked and HGV operators served with six-figure bills as part of a plan to cut the number of hugely disruptive bridge strikes.
Figures published by Network Rail show that 1,624 bridges were hit by vehicles — usually HGVs or buses — in the year to the end of March. This was more than four a day on average, despite a sharp drop in traffic during the period because of the pandemic.
Many incidents have been attributed to drivers following basic sat-navs on unfamiliar roads without paying attention to bridge height restrictions.
Rail services in and out of the southwest of England were disrupted after a Tesco lorry became
wedged beneath a bridge in Plymouth on Monday. Only one train an hour could run in each direction at reduced speed on the main line through Devon and Cornwall. Repairs were expected to have been completed by last night.
Also this week, trains were disrupted throughout mid-Wales when a construction lorry hit a railway bridge in Machynlleth, Powys, on Wednesday morning.
Network Rail said that bridge strikes can cost about £23 million a year in structural repairs as well as compensation to passengers for cancelled or delayed services. Its figures showed that the most costly incident in the past 12-month period happened on January 30 when a vehicle hit a bridge in Haymarket, Edinburgh, costing £155,690.
One bridge was hit by vehicles 25 times last year, official figures show. The 15ft-high bridge spanning Watling Street in Hinckley, Leicestershire, carries passenger and freight trains between Leicester and Birmingham. Another bridge on Bromford Road, next to Sandwell & Dudley railway station in the West Midlands, was hit 24 times.
Network Rail said it would seek to recover costs from the operators of HGVs involved in avoidable crashes. It will also report bridge strikes to the Traffic Commissioners for Great Britain, the regulator responsible for licensing professional drivers, which has the power to suspend or revoke licences.
Sir Peter Hendy, Network Rail’s chief executive, said: “A lorry or bus hitting a railway bridge isn’t an accident. It’s a failure of professional operators and drivers to properly plan their routes and know the height of their vehicles, and can cause fatalities and serious injuries for road users, delays for both road and rail travellers, and could cause a catastrophic railway accident.
“Network Rail looks to recover the entire cost of such incidents from operators and drivers, and also reports all of them to the traffic commissioners for consideration of enforcement and licence revocation.”
The total number of bridges hit in the 12 months to March 31 — 1,624 — was a 9 per cent drop on the previous year, when the figure was 1,787. However, it covered a period in which HGV traffic dropped by as much as 40 per cent compared with pre-pandemic levels.
Rod McKenzie, managing director of policy and public affairs at the Road Haulage Association, said specialised lorry sat-navs already gave bridge heights and urged HGV drivers to make more use of them rather than relying on mapping apps found on smartphones.
However, he added: “We have not got much sympathy for people who hit bridges because they should know the height of their truck and trailer and know when they see a road sign indicating a low bridge ahead that they need to be careful.”
