First time in nearly 15 years

UK PROFESSIONAL DRIVERS FORUMS THE UK PROFESSIONAL DRIVERS FORUM (INTERACTIVE)
1

Come June I will have been going over the water nearly every week for 15 years and I had to do something on Tuesday night that I have never had to do before over there.

I had to pay to park on a MSA :open_mouth: :open_mouth: :open_mouth: That’s one British export we could do without. :wink: :smiley:

This was in Switzerland in the Gotthard services at Scahttdorf at the bottom of the northbound descent from the St Gotthard tunnel just before the road splits for Luzern and Zurich.

The charge was 15CHF or €10. The ticket you get gives you a 35% discount in the restaurant, which I didn’t use as it was camion cuisine that night and you still have to pay for the shower, which is good and clean and the reason I usually stop there.

They do have limited parking there, only about 25 truck spaces, but I hope that isn’t going to catch on elsewhere. :unamused:

2

Talking of having to pay for parking, I heard that Thamesport, Ilse of Grain are going to charge £15 to park over night on the truck holding area.
So after taking shipping work from southampton , they are now going to charge us for the privilige of running out of time after waiting several hours to get turned around because they can’t cope with the new work load.

The nice thing about banging your head against a brick wall is that when you stop the pain goes away.

3

I have now learned that the Swiss have already intruduced parking charges at another services, at Neunkirch, and intend to introduce it on more service areas and get this on lay-bys :open_mouth: :open_mouth: :open_mouth: on the main road network.

They say the charges are to cover the cost of maintaining the areas and for security guards in charge of the safety of the sites.

Bearing in mind that there is a night driving ban for trucks in Switzerland between 22:00 and 05:00 and because of delays quite often you are forced to stop for the night in a lay-by it seems a bit much to charge to stop in one where the facilities at best would be a toilet… :unamused: :unamused: