A recent state election pitch from the Victorian Greens to build a $2.5 billion bike ‘superhighway’ got social media identity Tony Fulton thinking: why not go one step further and adapt the same idea for trucks?
Fulton, who first proposed the idea to his 123,000 followers on Tones Truckin Stories, told Big Rigs that making the far right-hand lane for trucks-only had the potential to radically improve traffic flow on key metropolitan freight routes.
“It’s something that’s never been trialled,” said Fulton, who is also the co-founder of TruckWiz, the popular truckies’ navigational app.
“They trial everything else which is basically to try and stop trucks from doing things, slowing them down, or trying to get them out of the way, but the idea of actually putting them out of harm’s reach in the right-hand lane has never been floated.”
Fulton said the concept means that when cars and other vehicles are merging on to a highway, they’re not taking unneccesary risks to get in front of the B-double, or forcing truckies to take evasive action to avoid them.
“A lot more would have to come into it because the trucks do have to get over to that right-hand land somehow, but it’s something to think about.
“When you look on highways, if the trucks are allowed in the right-hand lane, they usually end up in it becasue they’re actually faster than the cars when you’re up and about.
“In my head, if all the trucks are in the right-hand lane not holding everybody else up in the other three, then potentially traffic could flow better.”
Fulton says the idea has the potential to work well in areas such as Brisbane, along the Logan Motorway right down to Chinderah on the NSW border and on the Monash Freeway which links Melbourne’s CBD to its south-eastern suburbs.
“I wouldn’t have thought too many places in Sydney [would be suitable] though just because they just don’t have enough lanes on their highways.”
Fulton said the idea proposed by the Greens to spend that much money on bike lanes because transport is seen as Victoria’s biggest growing source of carbon emissions is just “ridiculous”.
“If they’re going to put the infrastructure into that, then how about making an extra lane that’s just for trucks.
“It’s a concept that I don’t believe has ever been brought up.”