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Otley's up in arms over trucks in town
Page 16
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A CROWD OF 100 people marched through Otley in West Yorkshire last Saturday (11 October) to protest at the number of trucks driving through the town.
Otley has a high level of through-traffic, due in the main to a quarry that serves Leeds City Council. The anti-truck campaign was inspired by the death of local woman Joan Babb in 2002 in an accident involving an HGV.
The Safety On Otley's Roads (SOOR) campaign aims to ban all HGVs from the town unless they are based there.
SOOR plans to follow up the march by lobbying Leeds City Council in November, but already claims the support of Leeds North West MP Harold Best, who says that trucks are now a serious problem in the town. Campaign president Brian Finley describes the situation as: "an absolute nightmare. We've had two ambulances forced off the road and we've had groups of children nearly wiped off the earth by vehicles coming down at terrible speeds." he explains.
Malcolm Bingham, FTA regional policy manager. North. says: "We have been discussing the issue and trying to make progress through the West Yorkshire Freight Group, and we had worked towards agreement with quarry operators to reduce traffic going through Otley.
"There will be further work in order to make some sort of sense of it. However, to divert vehicles away from that area involves a serious increase in journey times on other unsuitable roads."