The reaction to the vehicle dimension and mass (VDAM) rule changes from heavy transport industry stakeholders is a mixed one, ranging from lukewarmly positive to overall disappointment as some parties feel there has been a missed opportunity to make a greater change.
“The new VDAM rule broadly landed where the Road Transport Forum and our associations expected it to be,” says RTF chief executive officer Ken Shirley.
“We see it very much as an evolutionary step rather than a revolutionary one,”
He says: “The new rule is based on principles of vehicles fitting the network and road safety and is, therefore, more focussed on better road fit than increasing productivity.”
Shirley adds: “It is a sensible simplification and consolidation of what has been a very complicated and confusing set of rules.
This will make it easier for practitioners to understand.”
“Drivers will need to be aware of axle spacings when carrying near the load limit, and also need to be mindful that their lashings are required to be within the 2.55m width limit,” he says.
“The industry opposed the reduction in weight tolerance from 1500kg to 500kg, and we are therefore disappointed that the 500kg tolerance prevailed.”
Future-proof rule?
IMVIA membership and technical services manager Malcolm Yorston says: “While pleased with the majority of the rule I am disappointed that it didn’t, in my opinion, go far enough.”
According to Yorston, the IMVIA submission had a recommendation that telemetry be incorporated into the rule.
“We had the opportunity to future-proof the rule by incorporating modern technology into the law, so that permits could be done away with [for] vehicles with on-board weighing incorporated into the telemetry equipment that many operators are now using.”
Yorston says: “With GPS it is possible to ascertain where a heavy motor vehicle is located, if it is fully laden within its axle limits and on a road that it is permitted to be, no problem, as soon as it deviates on to an excluded route, an infringement or offence notice can generate automatically.
“The CVIU would not need to worry about these vehicles on the permitted routes as they will have access to the telemetry, including on-board weighing data.”
Yorston adds: “Similarly, they will know if the driver has been over-speeding and within their driving hours, as drivers would have unique identifiers that the truck or buses system would detect and log in as soon as the driver climbed into the cab.”
Disappointing overall says MIA
While the Motor Industry Association is pleased with the outcome of the changes to the VDAM rule in as far as they go, overall it is left disappointed, says chief executive David Crawford.
Crawford says changes to make the permitting system more flexible are welcomed, as are the minor changes to mass and dimension parameters.
“However, at the start of the review, industry had high hopes some of the limitations of how the rule is constructed would be addressed. Sadly they are not,” Crawford says.
“We are still saddled with an old set of parameters dating back several decades, which results in an overly complicated rule.
Although the current purpose of the VDAM rule is primarily safety driven, it is evident many aspects of the rule are in fact based on infrastructure management considerations,” he says.
“However, the continued emphasis on infrastructure management is creating a vicious circle of sub-standard infrastructure provision and dramatically lower mass limits for heavy vehicles than any comparable jurisdiction.”
Crawford says: “Of particular concern are limits for buses. It is the view of the industry that raising the rear axle limit by a meagre 800kg to 9000kg is woefully inadequate. It doesn’t even address the historical shortfall, let alone address current and future requirements.”
“Most modern low-floor two-axle rear-engine buses will have a rear axle mass of between 9400kg and 12,000kg when fully loaded with passengers. Requiring buses to operate under the permit is less than optimal,” Crawford says.
“In commenting on the Land Transport Act Amendment Bill, the MIA notes that to date the appropriate management of infrastructure has seemingly prevented any meaningful attempt to address systemic vehicle weight issues in the heavy vehicle sector,” he says.
“The MIA does not support giving further weight to the management of infrastructure in decision making under the Land Transport Act when these considerations merely prevent a step-change in infrastructure provision.
“Additionally, the VDAM rule did not address new technology in a meaningful way. Because the rule does not address new technology, distributors and their customers are significantly impacted,” he says.
Crawford says the absence of a flexible approach to new technology results in less choice of vehicles on our roads and this, in turn, limits the extent of productivity gains Government is seeking from the amendments.
In conclusion, he says: “Items which are not addressed in the rule but would be of significant value to productivity are retracting axle drives, tri-axle sets with a combination of twin-tyred and single-tyred axles, steering axles in a tandem or tri-axle set, and articulated bus rear overhangs.”
