Residents in Holbrook, in the NSW Riverina, have convinced the local council to ban truckies from parking along the southern half of Albury Street due to noise complaints.
Holbrook is about halfway between Melbourne and Sydney on the Hume Highway, making it a popular spot for truck drivers to pull over to rest and swap trailers.
But the only truck stop in the town can only accommodate about a dozen B-doubles, which forces other trucks to park in front of houses along the main drag, Albury Street.
Resident Bruce Quick told ABC News that for years entire households regularly woke up in the middle of the night due to “very noisy” truck changeovers, before looking outside to allegedly see drivers urinating on their fences and lawns.
As a result, the council said that trucks will be banned from parking along the road between 9pm and 7am, with signage warning them they will be fined by police if the new rules are breached.
“With the distress the residents are under, we had to take some action and that’s what we decided to do,” the council’s director of engineering, Greg Blackie, said.
The council plans to discuss a long-term solution, such as the construction of a larger truck stop, with Transport for NSW.
“There’s no point if we do [the restrictions] in one area and they just move to another area,” Blackie added.
“No doubt we need a purpose-built truck parking and changeover area … but it needs some significant civil works and other works associated, which is not cheap.”
Big Rigs has approached the local council for more details and to ask if it plans to apply for a share of the $140 million in rest areas funds that Labor is now allocating to those that need it the most.