LRTAWA: It’s a good time to be a transporter

LRTAWA by David Fyfe, President, Livestock and Rural Transport Association of Western Australia (Inc)

It’s a good time to be a transporter

It is a quirk of human nature that it seems easier to complain than to highlight the many positives in our dayto-day existence. We ‘sweat the small stuff’ as they say and ignore the bigger picture. In my opinion the transport industry is a great place to be right now. There has never been a better time to earn a commercially viable rate.

Even though the Covid-19 experience has brought many, many negatives, if you sift through the gloom there are impacts on the transport industry that hopefully will have a lasting impact.

Chief among those is the designation of transport as an essential industry. This has not only allowed us to continue working, it has shone a spotlight on poor driver

Roads to Reuse Initiative

The McGowan Government’s pilot Roads to Reuse project, which uses recycled construction and demolition (C&D) material as road base, has been a resounding success and will now be expanded to use construction material from the former Princess Margaret Hospital site.

The Roads to Reuse pilot used more than 25,000 tonnes of recycled C&D material as part of the Kwinana Freeway Northbound Widening Project from Russell Road to Roe Highway. A further 7,000 tonnes of material was used in the Murdoch Drive Connection project.

A new report found the project demonstrated a range of economic and environmental benefits: • The Roads to Reuse product specification - which protects health and the environment - is practical for industry, while its rigorous criteria, systems, processes, and independent oversight provided environmental assurance and transparency for purchasers; • The material was consistently high quality and users of Roads to Reuse products have increased confidence in its reliability; • Using the product resulted in engineering benefits, including water saving, increased durability over raw material, and lifecycle cost reductions. The program will now be expanded to include the use of demolition and construction material from the former Princess Margaret Hospital site.

Six buildings have now been demolished on the site with six to go. It is estimated more than 80,000 tonnes of non-hazardous material will be recycled from the demolition site - this is equivalent in size to two Subiaco Ovals.

The road base used in the pilot project was re-purposed material from the demolition of the iconic Subiaco Oval grandstands.

As part of the expansion of the program, the State Government will roll out additional actions to help avoid waste and meet recovery targets.

For example, DevelopmentWA has committed to ensuring all projects with demolition works over $1 million and