TfL to trial out-of-hours delivery by lorries in London

I see that as usual groups representing residents' interests have not been involved in the Freight Forum, or invited to respond to the Mayor's Roads Task Force consultation. Everyone wants roads to be much, much safer for cyclists. But shifting HGV and van deliveries to 11pm to 7am will have a very serious negative impact on the lives of central London residents. Some of my neighbours cycle regularly and frequently, but they also need to sleep at night. At the moment the levels of noise in our neighbourhood are above the levels that affect health, as in the WHO guidelines, night and day. Currently there are six post-midnight waste collections using our street, one of which involves torrents of bottles cascading into the back of a rattling truck, and three of which use reversing alarms at high volume. The engine noise, the crashing of every moving part of these vehicles as they zoom through residential side streets, the hydraulic lifting gear - it is impossible to sleep through these noise events. Until recently one local retailer had nightly deliveries by vehicles of various sizes, for periods ranging from half an hour to several hours. The banging and booming from moving huge boxes inside cavernous vans, the roar of barrows and trolley wheels on the pavement and road, the slamming of doors, were a nightmare for residents. Residents' efforts to get this major noise nuisance shifted to daytimes were eventually rewarded. Now it is all going to return. The effects noise has on human health and well-being are well known, and more is being researched and revealed. Children are particularly vulnerable, but their needs for sleep, and for quiet time for doing homework or relaxing, are completely ignored by the current restricted hours for noisy deliveries and collections (7am to 11pm).
Air pollution is another problem. Shifting deliveries to after 11pm is unlikely to reduce daytime air pollution to within WHO and EU guideline levels. It is during the night however that residents can open their windows, when the toxic fug has subsided somewhat. We do not need to have the night air, relatively clean at the moment, made more polluted by diesel vehicles.
Rather than reducing the quality of life in London to such a degree (how many years of being woken up six or seven times a night can people stand?), there should be recognition of the fact that London is no longer sustainable. Alternative strategies are needed, that shift the growth to other places in the UK that so desperately need it.

There is no mention of HGV's being banned during rush hours, but the trial is to allow HGV's to blast through the city at any hour of the day, is this better? At least before there was a lower risk of getting squashed at night.

Imagine if this was the other way round and lorries were never allowed to enter the city during rush-hours and now the TFL were planning to introduce them, into the dense traffic and unable to see cyclists properly. People would think it is madness.

The "measures ... in practice were a stonking success", in which case why haven't they been introduced already instead of undergoing a further trial, which isn't even going to happen now until next year? The lives of several people using bikes in central London might well have been saved had the measures been in place earlier.

The RHA might be "committed to working with TfL to address the challenges".

But judging from its comments after the death of a cyclist in Dulwich in collision with another HGV not fitted with safety gear, we can expect the Freight Transport Association to drag its heels and campaign against any such measures.

Seems like a step in the right direction to me

I think this is Huge_News.

And re the concern that building sites won't be affected, I'm sure Paris et al have a good workaround for stuff that is noisy and can't reasonably be done during the night.

This sounds like common sense to me.
A lot of other countries do not allow inner city deliveries during daylight.

This should be the same for the motorway as well...!

might be being over cynical and will admit to not having read all the linked docs above but unless construction sites start working 24hour days I don't see this having a huge impact as my understanding is that construction related vehicles are the main cause of fatalities. Other users of commercial vehicles, specifically large supermarkets, have wanted extended delivery hours for a long time but are often restricted by planning consent - looks to me like a segment of operators is getting what they want dressed up as road safety