Austroads looking at PBS access

The AustRoads Freight Program is conducting a survey on possible additional national access conditions for vehicles under Performance Based Standards and other high productivity vehicles.

They have proposed four packages for consideration including:

• A set of access conditions that would apply to all PBS vehicles and another set for all non-PBS higher productivity vehicles
• A set of access conditions that would apply only to higher productivity vehicles using high volume roads or urban areas
• Case by case specification of access conditions for PBS vehicles, set by the PRP. A minimalist set of access conditions would be applied to all non-PBS vehicles.
• Apply a minimalist set of conditions to all PBS vehicles

AustRoads says the focus for access conditions for heavy vehicles has shifted from dimension and mass limits, to the performance of vehicles against agreed standards that are consistent with a changed approach overseas. They also say this has seen the development of new technology that makes it possible to achieve even higher performance and road safety standards.

The AustRoads approach ignores earlier directions by the Council of Australian Governments (COAG) about delivering PBS as originally proposed and has expressed its concern that the proposals for ‘add on hurdles’ will create further barriers to the productivity and associated safety gains promised when PBS was approved by the transport ministers in October 2007.

ATA Chairman Trevor Martyn said road agencies need to get on with the job of opening up the nation’s roads to high productivity vehicles and to stop imposing restrictions on combinations with proven safety records.

“The use of higher productivity vehicles will meet the community’s demand for freight while providing genuine safety benefits from less exposure to heavy vehicles on our roads,” Martyn said. “If the AustRoads proposals go ahead they will cut the potential for productivity and safety gains off at the knees.

“PBS was about classifying the road system into four environments and then allowing the industry access based upon compliance with safety and infrastructure standards. There were 20 standards proposed and 16 confirmed.

“PBS now has seven road classification standards, but only two states have mapped or migrated any of their road networks into these classifications. We are not aware of any state that has finished mapping all seven classifications,” Martyn said.

He said the usefulness and success of PBS would hinge on uniform implementation across all jurisdictions and a single centralised rule that compliance, with the relevant standards, equals access to the relevant roads.