A key campaign for the Road Haulage Association (RHA) in Scotland is to get the road speed for heavy commercial trucks on par with England and Wales. That means 50mph on single carriageway roads and 60mph on dual carriageways. Part of the case is to build up empirical evidence, so the RHA and Transport News took on the A75 at both 40 and 50mph, reports Kevin Swallow.
Each day lorries pass through the seamless through the M74 and M6, the frontier that separates Scotland and England. The actual boundary line is the River Sark, which passes under the motorway.
For the trucks that stay on the motorway it’s as you were, where things do change is when you head off the motorway onto the single carriageway roads.
Hop off the M6 at J44 and turn right, it takes you along the A6071 to Longtown to join the A7. Here, in any heavy goods vehicle, you can do 50mph because it is still England.
Image: Watercrook Media.
Hop off the M6 at J44 and turn left, it takes you onto the B7076 and into Gretna. Here, if your heavy goods vehicle is over 7.5 tonnes gross vehicle weight (GVW), you’ll be doing 40mph because its Scotland.
Here the speed limit on single carriageway roads for trucks over 7.5 tonnes GVW is 40mph. The exception is the single carriageway sections of the A9 between Perth and Inverness, where trucks can travel at 50mph following a successful pilot.
On dual carriageways the speed limit is 50mph.
In 2015, the Department for Transport (DfT) introduced new speed regulations for HGVs in England and Wales; namely 50mph on single carriageways and 60mph on dual carriageways
Speaking at the Road Haulage Association’s Scottish Conference (TN, August 2022) Martin Reid, director for Scotland and Northern Ireland, told delegates at the Donald Malcolm Heritage Centre in Linwood, Glasgow, that the RHA wanted to bring Scotland into line with England and Wales.
The case to move to the same road speeds as England and Wales is a strong one, he said. “We are going to prepare a report later in the year involving many stakeholders from across all sectors and industries, we will call on the evidence from England and Wales, and the evidence and findings from the A9 50mph trial to make the case,” he said.
Key was a practical test along the A75 between Gretna and Cairnryan over two days at 40mph and then 50mph. A DAF LF 7.5 tonne boxvan was hired from MV Commercial with RHA driver trainer David Aitchison behind the wheel.
SHUTTERSTOCK.
The A75 is one of Scotland’s busiest routes. It’s a 162km stretch of road that connects Northern Ireland with the UK mainland via two ports at Cairnryan, north of Stranraer in Dumfries & Galloway.
Freight to and from Northern Ireland regularly tramps along the route but the road is essentially a single carriageway route save for four sections of dual carriageway; the M74/A75 section at Gretna, two sections either side of Dumfries and a fourth near Newton Stewart. Combined these two-lane sections account for around 11km of tarmac, approximately 4% of the route (TN, July 2022).
Westbound there are 11 passing sections where the road becomes three lanes, and eastbound we counted six. And there are only two villages that the A75 goes through: Springholm and Crocketford.
Speed: 40mph
For the initial westbound journey, we passed one speed camera van, also known as a mobile safety camera, set up on the route. It was on the opposite side of road facing us after 19km, just before you reach Carrutherstown. Otherwise, this leg of the journey proved uneventful.
The return leg did provide more entertainment. Two cars overtook on a single-carriageway section and almost caused a road traffic collision with an oncoming car, who thankfully slowed. And there were two illegal overtakes by cars going over the double-white lines in the middle of the single-carriageway.
Speed: 50mph
Travelling at a faster speed on the westbound route brought much more interaction with other motorists, there was more jostling for position on the passing places. Several times we caught slower moving vehicles, which included trucks, car and caravan combinations, motorhomes, agricultural vehicles and foreign-registered cars. Outbound there were no mobile speed camera units, whereas on the return to Gretna, we passed two.
Faster is Better
On three separate occasions during my holiday in late August heading up the A82 past Fort William, trucks sporting the colours of local operators pulled into laybys to let faster traffic past before resuming their journey. Honourable mentions go to Ferguson Transport & Shipping and Euan Bowman.
It was a selfless act of professionalism from three lorry drivers who each stuck to the national road speed limit for heavy goods vehicles over 7.5 tonnes GVW.
Similarly, I followed two other trucks along the A87 towards the Kyle of Lochalsh who drove in excess of 50mph who didn’t feel the need to pull over to let faster vehicles past because the traffic behind had trouble keeping up.
SHUTTERSTOCK.
The controlled element of the A75 test didn’t bring such refined examples, but what it did do was provide empirical evidence of what both speed limits offer the end user and other road users.
Trucks are governed by speed and lorry drivers by mandatory driving time. At 50mph over 324km, a total of 48 minutes of driving time was saved compared to making the trip at 40mph – a 15.1% saving.
If your trucks work across Scotland off motorway routes or the A9 then that time saving can be much higher. At 50mph, the truck and the driver can work more productively and deliver more or travel further, potentially reducing the size of an operator’s fleet and its overall running costs. Only a hike in fuel use counter this saving in time.
Transport Scotland published its A9 HGV 50mph Speed Limit Pilot in July 2018, which had begun in 2014 from Dunblane to Inverness. While it pointed to the positives of introducing a 50mph speed limit for HGVs, the expectation that it would be rolled out to the rest of Scotland didn’t materialise.
Instead, Transport Scotland said it would wait for the DfT to publish its third and final Evaluation of the National HGV Speed Limit Increase in England and Wales, which it did in July 2020.
Stakeholder interviews reported that awareness of the policy among drivers was good and a key benefit had been reduced driver stress and frustration, with both HGV drivers and general traffic considered to have benefited.
The report said: “Environmental analysis revealed no statistically significant effect on air quality and no perceptible change in noise level over a typical 18-hour day or during individual hours at night. This was true for both single and dual carriageways.”
SHUTTERSTOCK.
Government impact assessments prior to the introduction of the increased speed limits estimated a small increase in collisions, but the research showed there had been no impact.
It added: “The only significant finding [was] a reduction in collisions that are slight or serious across all study roads.”
In addition, journey time savings and vehicle operating costs were predicted prior to the policy change as translating into benefits of £224.6m between 2015 and 2031. An updated economic assessment conducted in 2019 increased the calculated benefits to £225.8m.
For Scotland to also reap the economic benefits of a more efficient road freight system, it needs to fall in line with England and Wales when it comes to road speeds for all HGVs.
Short term for the A75, increasing the road speed can provide an instant win, as with the 15.1% saving in driving time from this test.
Longer term suggests that dualling the A75 would be more beneficial, but that would take years from agreeing who should pay for it, planning and then to actually build it.
