About three years ago our road was closed for three months while LCC removed, at a cost of £225,000, the 1901 cast iron girders under the bridge and replaced them with reinforced concrete so that the bridge could carry EU size 42 tonne artics, which will never come down here because it's a narrow pre-industrial lane!
We are plagued with cars racing through though because our road shortcuts a set of traffic lights on the main road. So shortly before the work finished, two "access only" signs were temporarily "borrowed" from the contractors and disappeared. After work had finished the signs reappeared at each end of the street, chained to lamp posts with a little label warning that the chains and padlocks were private property and any attempt to cut them would be reported to the Police as criminal damage. Neighbours were quite impressed and I overheard a few very positive comments. I happened to be in the same MTB club as a bloke who worked at the highways department and he told me his boss was absolutely incensed at the idea of members of the public erecting signs and taking the law into their own hands. The signs did the trick though; the short-cutters had grown used to their rat run being closed so very few bothered coming down and we managed to gain another month of peace before the signs eventually vanished one Monday.
And I had absolutely nothing to do with it at all, oh no....
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