Reliance on trucks a killer
Thousands have died as a result of crashes involving trucks in the past 40 years. We need a better alternative, says Richard Worrall.
The loss of seven lives on State Highway 1 south of Picton over the weekend, when a truck and a van collided, highlights again the folly of a transport policy that since 1982 has been fixated on road building and road transport.
That was the year when decades-old restrictions on how far trucks could carry freight were finally abolished.
Predictably, when the restrictions were lifted, rail lost the great majority of its freight business. It could not compete on speed with trucks, with many rail lines engineered for 40kph average speeds.
The scale of this transfer of freight from rail to road was the subject of my master’s thesis in 1989, using the West Coast as a case study.
The increase in the number of heavy vehicles on roads over the past 40 years has come at a massive social cost in terms of additional deaths and injuries on highways.
At a conservative estimate, about 2500 people have been killed due to accidents involving heavy vehicles since deregulation.
The overwhelming majority of these accidents involves the largest category of trucks such as B-trains or articulated truck and trailer units hitting much smaller vehicles on our busiest state highways.
This level of carnage over the past four decades, and future accidents, could have and can be greatly reduced by increasing investment in rail and also coastal shipping, to allow proper integration of road, rail and shipping services. Rail and coastal shipping are inherently safer modes of transport than cars and trucks.
There really are no winners in the dogeat-dog freight transport sector which has dominated for the past 40 years.
Aside from the social cost of accidents, few trucking businesses make money as they are forced to ruthlessly compete by undercutting each other on price. Large corporate transport companies do so by forcing their drivers to become so-called independent contractors. This allows these companies to slash their labour costs as contractors are not entitled to holiday or sick leave, while other costs associated with employing staff directly are eliminated too.
KiwiRail seems permanently on government life support due to being burdened 100% with the cost of maintaining its network and lacking the resources to modernise the network.
Government investment continues to be sporadic and woefully inadequate in comparison with money lavished on roads.
The Government has signalled additional funding for coastal shipping, but it is doubtful the small amount will have much effect.
This brings me back to the terrible crash in Marlborough and how modal integration can work to everyone’s benefit. I am a relatively frequent user of the Christchurch to Picton highway for work and I cannot understand why there is not at the very least a dedicated truck ferry operating between Wellington and Lyttelton.
This would remove at least 80% of the heavy vehicles travelling that road. As anyone who has used that stretch of State Highway 1 is aware, it is wholly unsuited to very large vehicles, especially through the
Hundalees, where there are two 25kph hairpin bends.
Few people may realise how inefficient the Wellington to Picton ferry service is for moving people and freight between Wellington and Christchurch.
If you combine the distance between the two existing ferry terminals with the road distance between Picton and Christchurch, after travelling 31⁄2 hours from Wellington, you end up 10km further from Christchurch than when you started the journey.
A modern truck ferry could complete the journey between Wellington and Lyttelton in the same or less time than the current Cook Strait ferry and Picton-to-Christchurch road journey.
Trucking companies could save almost 700km of wear and tear on their trucks, along with reduced operating costs on the approximately 2000km round trip between Christchurch and Auckland.
Such efficiency gains would help address the ongoing truck driver shortage, as drivers would be needed only at either end of the ferry service.
And, finally, returning to the human suffering our transport policy settings inflict on so many, if such a service was already operating, road carnage such as that seen at the weekend would be far less likely.