Ban in force without proper signposting
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AN ELEVENTH-hour
it
tempt to block the London lorry ban failed last Friday, but the bill] was introduced with sparse signing and no known prosecutions of operators breaking the ban,
The Freight Transport Association made a last minute attempt to halt the introduction of the night and weekend ban, but ran out of time.
It had asked the Attorney General to intervene.
Lack of proper signing, with many operators still not receiving exemption plates for their vehicles, meant that intervention was necessary to prevent chaos, the FT A argued.
But instead the FTA had to be satisfied with a pledge from the GLC that it had checked with its signing contractor, and that all the regulatory (prohibition) signs would be in position by the time of the ban's introduction at 9pm last Friday.
In the event, many of the regulatory signs were not erected and GLC transport committee chair Dave Wetzel had to admit that he had been Hc has now ordered a sign survey, independent of the signing contractor, and promises that within the next week "all the signing should be sorted out".
On Monday this week, Wetzel was hailing the lorry ban as "the largest lorry control measure in the world" which had achieved huge reductions in lorry traffic and noise and with none of the "horror stories" the freight industry had predicted.
The first spot traffic count that morning (at (iam) had revealed a 30 per cent reduction in traffic over 16.5 tonnes in Hounslow, West London, he said.
And it had all been achieved without any of the problems the freight industry said would occur, be declared. There had been no loss of jobs, no traffic jams at the ban's boundary in the early morning and no shops without food.
• Signing chaos, p12