Important changes to the over-complex regulations governing heavy and abnormal transport in Germany – and moves to speed up permit approvals – have been approved by the country’s Federal Cabinet.
The changes have been long called for by German industry leaders through the lobby group Verbändeinitiative Großraum und Schwertransporte (VI GST) whose founding members include ESTA and German association BSK.
VI GST brought together 31 mostly German economic, business and transport organisations to pressure the German government to urgently improve the difficult conditions faced by large and heavy transports in the country.
The problems include unnecessary and obstructive local regulations, long delays in obtaining permits and weak or unusable infrastructure that cause transports to take lengthy detours.
On November 6, Germany’s Federal Cabinet approved urgent amendments to the country’s General Administrative Regulation on Road Traffic Regulations (VwV-StVO).
The amendments include:
- Introduction of a guideline of two weeks for permit application processing by responsible federal and state authorities.
- More flexible regulations for falling below approved dimensions and weights of the transport
- Bringing forward the start of night driving to 20:00 hours from 22:00 hours to increase flexibility
- Enabling the transport of divisible loads up to a maximum weight of 40 tons on oversized and heavy transport (Großraum und SchwerTransport -GST) empty runs to make better use of existing truck capacities.
- Relaxation of the language requirement for GSTs to accept English as well as German
The Federal Council still has to approve the changes but if finally agreed, they are due to come into force in Spring 2025.
ESTA Director Ton Klijn said: “Because Germany is so central to Europe’s geography and economy, this is an important step forward for the heavy and abnormal transport industry as a whole.
“We have long campaigned on this issue, supporting our German members and colleagues and we would like to congratulate them on their success to date”.
“But this also shows that if we can persuade our clients and the wider industry to campaign alongside us, we can exert much more leverage over our regulators and political leaders.”