THE crashes and bangs of HGVs thundering over sunken strips along Staindrop’s main street is keeping people awake at night.
The parish council’s September meeting heard that the problem was particularly bad when traffic was redirected through the village during overnight closures of the A66 for works.
Council chairman Cllr David Reed said one of the problem areas is outside his home near the Wheatsheaf Inn. He said: “There is a piece of road that really wants looking at because when wagons go over it, it just shakes the whole village.” Cllr Roger Humphries said a similar problem was happening near his home.
He said: “Directly opposite us there is a repair for a BT thing that was done years ago and after a complaint the county patched it, but over the last three or four months it has sunk again
“If you get a heavy wagon at one o’ clock in the morning going over there, the noise is horrendous.
“There are two problems – you can feel the house shake, but the noise, particularly if it is an empty articulated wagon, is horrendous.”
County officers resurfaced a stretch of the B6277 between the church and the Spar during the Covid-19 lockdown and the parish council decided, in light of the surge in traffic volume, to ask for the remainder road to be resurfaced. They also agreed to report the sunken strips.
Cllr Ed Chicken said it was his view that the village should never have traffic calming measures, such as rumble strips or bumps installed.
He said: “If you have bumps in the road then the vibrations you are getting now are nothing in comparison to what you get if you have traffic calming – so we never want to have traffic calming for that reason.”
