Trucking Industry Summit 2022 In the September, October, and November 2022 issues, we summarise the key addresses from the Trucking Industry Summit 2022 held in Christchurch at the end of July. This month, the ministry, regulator, and police.
Harriet Shelton Ministry of Transport MoT manager supply chain
The industry needs to get itself into a good position to handle change and to prepare for the challenges ahead, says Shelton. “It was only 100 years ago that horses were the main way we moved freight around New Zealand. Major system shifts have happened before – and we do adjust. But the pace of change seems to have accelerated – it just seems to be faster than ever.” Shelton says New Zealand is at risk of losing its clean green image if it doesn’t make changes to emissions targets. “We all know that heavy vehicles contribute a lot of emissions. We’ve seen the statistics,” she says. “But New Zealand is always going to be dependent on road transport. Even if we shift a little bit more by rail and coastal shipping, transport will still be the main way we move freight. And so the task of decarbonising that road freight is a really, really important one.” Shelton says the government’s goal of reducing transport emissions is happening while freight tasks are increasing. “We need to accelerate the uptake of zero-emission heavy vehicles. We need to reduce the emissions in our existing fleets by improving vehicle efficiencies and operational efficiencies,” she says. “Ninety-three percent of our freight in New Zealand is carried by road. That’s unlikely to change very much. We need to prepare the system to face the substantial changes that are going to occur. “This poses a lot of challenges for the sector, but also provides a lot of
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opportunities for the system to do better and to work smarter.”
Tara MacMillan
Waka Kotahi Road to Zero portfolio manager Waka Kotahi has a decade-long strategy to reduce death and serious injuries by 40% by 2030 against 2018 levels. MacMillan says only an 11% reduction has been achieved so far, so much more work is needed. Key interventions include Alcolocks, safety cameras, police enforcement, with speed and infrastructure two significant components. She says where infrastructure is not an option or funding isn’t available, lowering speeds is necessary to make roads safer. “We recognise that changes like dropping down to 80kph is a lot for New Zealanders to wrap their heads around. “We know that profit equals efficiency. We know that supply-chain costs have increased. But we also know that evidence tells us lower speeds reduce wear and tear on your trucks, and that is a noticeable benefit of those lower speeds. “However, we also know that you want to see our state highways supplying as much of the network at 100kph as much as possible. We are taking a pragmatic approach.” MacMillan says to get New Zealanders and industries behind the Road to Zero strategy, Waka Kotahi must get the pace of change right. “And that is why you might see greater use of 90kph where it makes sense and on interim bases only over the next few years,” she says. However, if other solutions cannot be rolled out, the speed limit will stay or be lowered even further. MacMillan says there is also a focus on making fleets safer, with the industry working to remove one- and two-star vehicles – which 30% of deaths are attributed to – out of fleets. Technology also plays a big part in the Road to Zero strategy. “We know a lot of you are already on the journey of
adopting telematics. We think that will absolutely encourage safe behaviours,” she says. “It is a focus of our three-year action plan that kicks off next year.” Fatigue management is also a hot topic, according to MacMillan. “We need drivers to make the right choices. Reviews are underway, and a lot of work has been done to see what is in place over in Australia, the settings they’ve deployed, the learnings they’ve had, so we can apply that to New Zealand.”
Neil Walker
Waka Kotahi National maintenance and operations Climate change, emissions targets, population growth and an increase in road freight over the past decade have thrown a few headaches Waka Kotahi’s way. Walker says one of Waka Kotahi’s key priorities is preparing for New Zealand’s weather events that damage roads and infrastructure. “We’ve had a pretty tough past six months with the intensity of our weather events. We are refreshing our longer-term planning because we know there’s a lot ahead that we’re going to have to think about how we respond, and the first of those is climate change,” he says. “We’ve got a reasonably resilient highway, but it is getting harder and harder to actually manage, and the events are getting harder to respond to due to the intensity of them.” Walker says the government’s emissions-reductions plan is also a priority. “We have to figure out what that actually means for the way that we undertake our work in the network. It’s a 30-year strategy, but it’s got to look at what we need to do tomorrow right out to that 30-year period.” Population growth is also an area of focus. “You have to design your transport network with how you’re building your communities and how people want to live,” says Walker. He says the growth in road freight over the last decade has been a surprise.
