The National Heavy Vehicle Regulator (NHVR) has today launched a new interactive tool – Freight PASS – to help industry and road managers make more informed safety, productivity and sustainability decisions about the benefits of heavy vehicle combinations on the road network.
NHVR CEO Sal Petroccitto OAM said the new Freight PASS uses more than one million registration data records to assess a range of performance factors for conventional and Performance Based Standards (PBS) vehicles including crash likelihood, trip numbers and travel time, and fuel consumption.
“The Freight PASS will improve the speed, accuracy and consistency when making decisions about using safer and more productive vehicles, to meet Australia’s growing freight task and zero emission targets,” Mr Petroccitto said.
“The tool has been developed by linking datasets across governments, industry, research agencies and the NHVR to produce a robust and reliable information source for use by industry and road managers.
“We want the tool to support industry by enabling the estimation of transport time and cost savings associated with shorter routes and arming road managers with the information and confidence to grant access to higher performance vehicles.”
The platform allows the user to input scenario data including the type ofvehicle, trip length, average speed and commodity to estimate time, crash rate, fuel consumption, carbon emissions, and estimate costs or savings from longer or shorter routes.
For example, the tool shows that a 30m PBS A-double will complete a nominated freight task more safely, inhalf the time, with almost half thefuel consumption and carbon emissions than a 19m conventional semi-trailer.
“Freight PASS dispels the notion that larger vehicles aremore dangerous and polluting, by improving the understanding of heavy vehicle performance via a platform that is visual and interactive,” Mr Petroccitto said.
“We encourage users to take advantage of this dynamic tool to ensure they balance and consider the long-term effects of road freight activity on productivity, safety and sustainability.”
Australian Trucking Association CEO Mathew Munro said the new technology would support evidence-based decisions and improve consistency across state and territory borders.
“This is a terrific initiative that will enable operators to leverage technology to support streamlined and consistent access decisions,” Mr Munro said.
“We’re working with the NHVR to drive continuous improvement in the sector to make it easier for our members to improve safety, productivity and sustainability across their fleets.”
Freight PASS is the first of a suite of productivity related tools that will be released for consultation in the coming months.
The NHVR is encouraging those with an interest in Freight PASS to provide feedback on the tool. Details on how to provide feedback as well as information on a series of webinars to support the use of Freight PASS will be released shortly.
