Trial Run For A20 Freight Queuing Plan To Complement Operation Stack

Kent Police will trial a new temporary holding area for freight approaching the port of Dover on the A20 this Sunday evening (28 September).

The scheme is designed to complement Operation Stack during peak periods of demand for ferry services while also easing severe congestion and tailbacks that occur along Dover's Townwall Street when continental freight traffic starts building up at the port.

Kent Police, along with Port of Dover, the Highways Agency, ferry operators and other partners who are involved with Operation Stack will test a traffic management system between the Court Wood and Aycliff roundabouts on the coastbound stretch of the A20.

Signs will be put in place in the morning but the trial won't start until 6pm and run for two to three hours.

If it proves successful, then it will be introduced from next week whenever phase one of Operation Stack has to be implemented because of the recent fire that has restricted capacity through the Channel Tunnel.

The system works by separating lorries into a queue on the nearside coastbound lane of the A20 from the Court Wood roundabout, with the outside lane remaining open to other traffic, travelling in a restricted mandatory 50mph limit.

It is designed to provide relief to town centre congestion, more control over queuing freight and allow the port of Dover to continue to operate effectively to clear any lorry backlog.

Freight traffic in the holding queue will be called forward as space becomes available in the docks and is designed as a temporary measure to stay in place for only a few hours.

Assistant Chief Constable Allyn Thomas said: "It should also allow us to work more closely with the ferry operators to make sure that the services they are running are loaded to capacity, which will make the port operation as effective as possible."

The temporary holding queue on the A20 should be able to hold up to four hundred lorries. Coupled with phase one, this may help to relieve enough freight traffic to avoid extending Operation Stack to phase two, between junctions 8 (Leeds Castle) and 9 (Ashford West), on all but the most serious occasions.