Bridge traps 200
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• More than 200 truck drivers, face fines after being caught using a 400-year-old bridge by a spy camera which has been in place for three months.
The first batch of 20 drivers, who ignored the 7.5-tonne weight restriction on County Bridge at Barnard Castle, Co Durham, have been fined up to E100 with £20 costs.
The g30,000 recording systern was installed by Durham County Council last September. amid fears that the damage caused by 1-IGVs would close the single-lane stone arch bridge to all traffic. It measures the length and axle weight of the 6,000 vehicles which use the bridge on the A67 each day.
But local owner-driver Mervyn Close, who runs a fourvehicle livestock transport firm from nearby Bowes, believes that councillors are using the bridge as an excuse to stop trucks going into the bottom part of Barnard Castle.
"The bridge looks perfectly able to take trucks," says Close, "and the double-decker buses they let go on there are heavier than my fourwheelers."
He adds that avoiding the bridge not only adds 10km to a return journey — it takes trucks over a similar ancient bridge.