The Department for Transport began a trial of longer semi-trailers (LSTs) for articulated goods vehicles in January 2012 on roads in Great Britain.
The trial aims to see if using longer semi-trailers achieves the anticipated environmental and economic benefits while assessing their impact on road safety.
2020 headline information
|
Trial take up |
Trial maximum: 2,800 LSTs |
|
2,696 (96%) |
LSTs registered on current or past vehicle special orders (VSOs) and not registered as scrapped (% of trial target of 2,800 trailers) |
|
2,621 (93%) |
LSTs on the road and submitted trial data (% of trial target of 2,800 trailers) |
|
250 |
Number of operators with trailers on the road and due to submit data in final period of 2020 |
|
Utilisation and kilometres (km) saved |
|
|
7.2 million |
Journey legs travelled by LSTs during the trial |
|
899 million |
km travelled by LSTs during the trial, analysis in 2017 showed LST usage to be 85% trunk, 13% principal and 2% minor roads |
|
66 to 73 million |
Vehicle km saved by LST operations (end 2020). Lower – upper estimates (upper includes empty return legs that would also be saved) |
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