Lower Saxony and North Rhine-Westphalia have adopted new regulations on truck bans on consecutive public holidays. This means that truck drivers will not have to take unnecessarily long breaks when travelling through both federal states.
At the beginning of November, the Ministers of Transport, Bernd Althusmann from Lower Saxony and Hendrik Wüst, concluded an agreement to reduce the duration of truck bans on consecutive days off in both federal states. The problem arose when Lower Saxony joined the three other federal states that celebrate the Reformation Day on 31 October. On the other hand, in North Rhine-Westphalia, the public holiday is 1 November (All Saints’ Day). Both ministers agreed that the new holiday, and therefore the truck bans, would have a major impact on the transport industry.
Althusmann and Wüst, therefore, agreed in an agreement called the Osnabrück Declaration that they would limit the duration of the truck traffic ban by a few hours. It will apply not from 0:00 to 10:00 pm, as before, but from 6:00 am to 10:00 pm. However, this limitation will apply only to the most important transit connections, i.e. A2, A30, A31 and A33, the dvz.de transport portal reads.
The agreement will apply from 2020. It is also intended to avoid overloading at truck parking lots and truck convoys after public holidays.
Photo: Trans.INFO