Freight in Greater Manchester
This page of the Local Transport Plan website is designed to assist the movement of freight in Greater Manchester, whilst also promoting better practice in reducing its environmental impact on communities.
The content of this page has been drawn up by the Greater Manchester Freight Quality Partnership, which was set up in 2002, in response to the Government's wish to see local authorities, freight operators and other interested parties co-operate in order to address freight transport issues. The Partnership includes the freight trade associations, Network Rail, Local Authorities, the Highways Agency and Greater Manchester Police.
Freight movement is vital to the functioning of Greater Manchester's economy. A number of the improvements made to the transport system through the Local Transport Plan benefit freight movement as well as general traffic -for example by-pass schemes, and other projects to improve traffic flow on existing roads. However, continually increasing volumes of traffic , especially on the motorway system, affect the reliability of freight journeys. As major increases in capacity are impractical, both in terms of cost and current transport policy, making the best use of the capacity we already have is of vital importance to freight movement.
Part of this management is ensuring as far as possible that freight vehicles travel on roads which are of a suitable standard, thus avoiding the time wasted and the environmental impact imposed when the wrong route is used. The Greater Manchester Drivers' Freight Map on this website aims to help operators and drivers to select the most appropriate route to access a wide range of freight-generating and attracting sites, and to raise awareness of access restrictions on town centre streets.
Also included is a variety of information on improving environmental performance, with other useful contacts for operators.
The latest meeting of the Freight Quality Partnership was on 11 March 2009. Topics discussed were:
- Freight signing, including progression of the initiative to improve signing to freight generators/attractors in GM, and the problem of foreign lorries ignoring signage
- Inclusion of links to the GM Freight Map from the FTA and RHA websites.
- The DfT document ' Delivering a sustainable transport system - the Logistics Perspective'. The FQP decided that the Greater Manchester priorities for it to address were congestion, safety, incident and delay handling, and deliveries
- The profile of freight within the work of the new GMITA
- How to ensure that local freight routing information can be incorporated in new freight-specific SATNAV systems
- Concern about the DFT's Freight Facilities Grant not being available in the North West
The FQP will next meet on 15 September 2009
This site is still under developement, and future sections will be added to provide more detail on motorway service area facilities, HGV parking, local routing on major sites, road works information links, and rail facilities.
Freight Map
Useful Links
Highways Agency - HGV section
http://www.highways.gov.uk/hgv
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