Preuilly Residents Are Fed Up With the Trucks

Twenty metre long trucks drive up and down the main street of Preuilly incessantly. Last year the authorities recorded thirty traffic incidents. The mayor says he is powerless to do anything. The trucks find traversing the centre of town on the D725 difficult, and often scrape buildings along the way.

The trouble is we are on the départementale route between Chateauroux and Chatellerault, and the situation is getting worse, with bigger and bigger trucks. The shopkeepers along the main street recognise that the trucks have to make deliveries to them, but the ones who are just using the street as a rat run are resented. There are other routes they could choose, but they take longer, and time is money.

The fronts of shops get damaged, walls knocked down and posts ripped up as the trucks pass. It is because when two trucks meet one another at the corner of la Grand rue and rue Chaumont-Patin they mount the gutter onto the footpath. Karim has had to replace his hanging sign for the mini supermarket several times, which costs him around €350 each time it happens.

The mayor is worried about the safety of the inhabitants. Failing any better method he is going to have 30 cm bollards installed, to stop wheels mounting the footpath. He says they'll be ugly, but unfortunately there isn't any choice. He's also banned trucks over 17.5 tonnes but on the municipal routes. The problem is concentrated on the D725, but he doesn't have authority over that route as it is départementale.

The ideal would be a bypass but the Département of Indre et Loire says it is impossible. It would be too costly and too difficult administratively. The only possible solution is to require heavy vehicles to take more suitable routes, indicated with the appropriate signage. The only difficulty with that is convincing the municipalities who will inherit all this traffic, and the road safety commissions of the Départements of Indre and Vienne.

The three road safety commissions will have to be brought together and Preuilly will have to really make a great case. We will have to be careful not to come across as simply not wanting the trucks and being willing to foist them on other municipalities. Instead we'll have to point out that there have been suitable routes in existance for years. We need trucks which have no business in Preuilly to be required to take more suitable routes. The Département says it is ready to help Preuilly in this endeavour.

Video of trucks traversing Preuilly sur Claise can be found on France Bleu Touraine (local television news) and France TV2 (national television news, starting at 12.04).