Late last week our Board chair Cam Bagrie, Policy Lead Billy Clemens and I met with the Minister for Rail, Winston Peters, to chat about the Interislander vessel replacement project. Being ever the optimist I wanted to get assurances on three key things:
- that the market would remain commercially competitive;
- that the investment in the replacement vessels has the capacity to meet the forecast demand over their lives serving the Cook Strait;
- and that the frequency of services would not be reduced.
While the Minister was listening carefully, he was playing his cards very close to his chest and didn’t have any direct comments about those issues.
So we look forward to the expected announcement from him at the end of this month, and it was good to leave the meeting with him clear on what matters to Transporting New Zealand members.
NZTA clarity on regulatory compliance strategy
A growing issue is industry compliance and I met with NZTA’s Brett Aldridge and Dylan Hunt to discuss NZTA’s approach to this.
As the organisation moves into taking more direct actions against driver behaviour, we have growing concerns with how it manages the danger of inconsistency between its responses and those of the police, who have traditionally enforced on-road matters.
A key point was regarding NZTA’s future approach to compliance. There is a cottage industry of third-party providers offering auditing and accreditation services in anticipation of new requirements for transport operators when accessing concessions to things like over-mass permits, flexible work hours, and reduced vehicle inspection frequency.
The concept of this has been around for decades and it is used in other countries, with Australia being a good example. These could be some of the biggest changes ever seen in the industry and we need NZTA to provide a clear view on its intent.
These things have been talked about more actively over the last four years and there are lots of conversations occurring between various parties with little, if any, cohesion. There’s a range of understanding about what has been committed to and this is leading to the growing uncertainty and risk to future investment.
Transporting New Zealand’s view continues to be that we follow international good practice and take learnings from the past. It was pleasing to end the meeting with NZTA committing to provide much greater clarity on this.
We also discussed the impact on transport operators that have had drivers train with NZTA-approved training providers, only to find that NZTA has removed the operator’s service provider status. This can mean the completed training is null and void.
This has occurred in the areas of dangerous goods and driver licensing and it means operators and/or drivers are faced with having to pay twice as they find another service provider and re-do the training.
The Desert Road reopening
Media interest in the Desert Road coming back on line has been high, which makes sense given the importance of the route.
Typically 800 trucks use that road each day, and about 240 trucks use SH4, the western route. During the closure SH4 became the detour for the vast majority of those trucks and 3000 or so cars which shifted over. That is a massive increase in traffic, and from what we hear, all road users and the communities managed the extra strain very well.
The cost related to the additional detour time for trucks was about $100,000 per day, so freight operators will be pleased to see the route reopened. As well as improved productivity, the reopening increases supply chain resilience because while SH4 was the main route, that increased the risk of single point of failure on the network across the Central Plateau.
So well done to NZTA, all its contractors and the weather gods on getting this project completed on time. A shout-out as well to all the truckies involved in the project. The Desert Road stretch is the last part of the Tirau to Waiouru maintenance project and that involved up to 145 truckloads of metal being used each day on some sites.
While we are pleased it has gone well, we are fascinated that NZTA has rebuilt and repaired about 40 percent more lane kilometres than planned. Given a chequered history of delivering projects on time and on budget, we’re keen to understand how it’s managed to turn its performance around.
If this is a continuing trend then that bodes very well for the future. Maybe that team should get involved in buying the Cook Strait vessels!
Thanks
We’ve had a fabulous response to our survey getting feedback for NZTA on Cardan Shaft Park Brakes so thanks to all that have done it. If you have vehicles that have this braking system you can do the survey here. It needs to be done by March 20.
The National Road Freight Survey continues to go great guns and a $500 Bridgestone voucher will be presented to one of the March survey respondents.
The information from industry personnel will give us plenty of hard data to work with which is vitally important in this time of technical change and changing customer demands.
Your opinion is important so if you haven’t already filled out it, just go to:
https://survey.researchnz.com/S2/1/RoadFreight/
