Opinion

NHVR launches new Freight PASS interactive online tool

The National Heavy Vehicle Regulator (NHVR) is excited to launch Freight PASS, a new interactive tool for the heavy vehicle industry to bolster safety, productivity and sustainability improvements for road managers, operators and the NHVR.

The new tool will help operators by improving the speed, accuracy and consistency of road manager decision-making by helping them understand the comparative safety, productivity, and sustainability benefits of different freight vehicles for a nominated freight task.

It’s a fantastic new tool for the heavy vehicle industry that will fill a vast knowledge gap for operators and road managers when they are assessing opportunities to let bigger and heavier vehicles on their roads, to meet Australia’s growing freight task.

Freight task growth –2020-2050 (BITRE 2022, Australian aggregate freight forecasts – 2022 update, Research Report 154, Canberra, ACT).

Road freight growth – 77 per cent total freight growth– 26 per cent rail freight growth – 5.7 per cent.

The new tool will also support the industry’s transition to a more sustainable future by helping road managers to better understand heavy vehicle performance and informing industry vehicle purchase decisions to support the transition to zero emission vehicles.

It will eliminate biases using data and methods that road managers trust that is scalable and flexible in application.

It will also 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.

Freight PASS is one of the first heavy vehicle access and productivity tools that marries different vehicle classifications and naming conventions, with their associated data and modelling methods, from across governments, industry, research agencies and the NHVR.

The platform allows the user to input scenario data including the type of vehicle, load mass, trip length, average speed, commodity to estimate time, crash rate, fuel consumption, carbon emissions, average cost and estimated savings.

The outputs standard is evaluation of vehicles based on their performance in a freight task, rather than comparing individual vehicles undertaking single trips.

For example, the tool shows that a 30m PBSA-double will complete a nominated freight task more safely, in half the time, with almost half the fuel consumption and carbon emissions than a 19m conventional semi-trailer.

Freight PASS dispels the notion that larger vehicles are more dangerous and polluting, by improving industry and road manager understanding of heavy vehicle performance via a platform that is visual and interactive.

The NHVR is committed to leveraging technology to boost safety, promote productivity and increase heavy vehicle standards, ultimately benefiting everyone on our roads.

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.

The new technology will support evidence-based decisions and improve consistency across state and territory borders.

It will also enable operators to leverage technology to obtain streamlined and consistent access decisions.

The NHVR is working with the heavy vehicle industry 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 will shortly release details for a series of webinars on Freight PASS.

See here for more information.

  • Brayden Soo is the NHVR’s manager for freight and supply chain

1 Comment

  1. How about asking the real question ,why are we paying 70c more for desiel when the barrel of oil really hasn’t change its dollar valve more than 2percent, when are these world delima going to be stop for use as fuel increase, when really it’s just creed over uncertainty

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