Lorries through Sudbury.

Some of my best ideas come to me in the middle of the night, and recently at about 3 a.m. I thought that I had had a really good one! Why not simply prohibit large lorries from passing through the centre of Sudbury? It would not be impossible, if rather inconvenient for drivers to find an alternative route via the A12 or A14. If juggernauts were simply banned at least some of Sudbury’s traffic problems would be solved! No more mediaeval houses shaken to their foundations, or children in pushchairs endangered by lorries mounting the pavement.

Unfortunately like many ‘strokes of genius’ it turns out that this isn’t a particularly original notion. I spoke to fellow councillor, Martyn Booth, Councillor for Sudbury South, after the Council meeting on Tuesday. Martyn has been fighting for a by-pass for years, and so knows all the ins and outs of the problem.

It seems that the fatal flaw is that the route that comprises Cross Street and Ballingdon Street is designated as a strategic lorry route that means that in the pecking order of roads it is just short of a motorway in importance. This state of affairs can only be altered by central Government. When money was spent on Ballingdon Bridge some years ago the suggestion was made that the road be downgraded, and the bridge left un-strengthened, but this idea fell on stony ground.

Stepping back for a nanosecond, don’t you find it incredible that anyone could have thought that it was a good idea to designate these streets as a strategic lorry route? And even more incredible that this remains their designation given their width and the size and weight of lorries today? Just another example of the fact that central government is completely out of touch with what goes on in the real world.

(The picture above is actually of an incident in Derby, but something similar could happen in Sudbury. My friend, Tony Venison who lives in Cross Street had a car through his dining room wall last year!)