A number of traffic counts have been carried out by the pavement design division of the Transport and Road Research Laboratory to provide data for the revision of road note 29, 3rd edition. In these counts the traffic has been counted separately for each traffic lane with the commercial traffic sub-divided by axle and wheel arrangement and with their body styles classified as either PSV (public service vehicle ), rigid, articulated or trailer. Data have also been obtained on the axle weights of particular types of commercial vehicles at three sites, at one of which the observations were repeated after a nine month interval. These data provide useful information on the axle and gross vehicle loading of particular types of commercial vehicles and the percentages of overweight axles and vehicles. The observations were carried out initially to provide data for use within the laboratory but a number of sources have drawn on a combination of the traffic count and axle weight data, to provide information on the wider aspects of commercial traffic and a summary of the available data has therefore been reproduced in this report. (Author/publisher)
Abstract