More lorries use Severn Bridge
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• Nearly 6m vehicles crossed the Severn Bridge in the first year of its operation about 3.3m more than crossed the Tay Bridge and almost 2m more than the Forth Bridge in their first years. These figures are given in a report published this month of a study of the effects of opening the bridge; this is an interim report in what will be a three-year study.
The report shows that the bridge carries a higher proportion of commercial vehicles than do trunk roads nationally or the two Scottish bridges. The volume of traffic also is growing more rapidly than on trunk roads or motorways, and the commercial vehicle traffic is felt to reflect the buoyancy of the economies on both sides of the bridge.
Eastbound and westbound loaded lorry journeys across the bridge are roughly in balance, but the commodities differ: 12 per cent of Welsh-originating traffic was steel, aluminium and iron and 9.4 per cent was coal, whereas of traffic into Wales 14.2 per cent was food, drink and tobacco, 6.5 per cent agricultural requisites. In both directions, empty running was about 28 per cent of capacity tonnage.
Second-year lorry traffic was almost 60 per cent up on the bridge's first year of operation; during the last three months of 1967 commercial vehicles comprised 23 per cent of total bridge traffic and totalled 94,000 vehicle movements a month.
As each stage of M4 is completed, east and west of the bridge, more traffic—especially lorries—is expected to be siphoned off older routes via Gloucester and on to the bridge. It is significant that after the bridge was opened, lorry traffic between Bristol and South Wales increased rapidly.