The transport network exists for two reasons to move around people and freight. On this blog we tend to focus on the former with one of the biggest benefits of public transport being that it allows for us to move a lot more people at any one time than we can with cars alone. One of the aspects that is crucial to making public transport work well is infrastructure that allows PT vehicles to not be affected by congestion. This obviously means the rail network, the busway the ferries and also includes roads with bus lanes on them.
We have talked quite a bit about the importance of bus lanes and the need for more of them and the great thing is with a bit of political will and in many cases, just some green paint, we could have a PT network that is able to move huge numbers of people, completely free of congestion. A completed cycle network would also greatly improve things.
While we do need a vastly improved public transport system, not everyone or everything is able to use it. Freight is of course one massive area that simply couldn’t be shifted onto an alternative network to get around the city (with the exception of some of the freight to or from ports). We are also repeatedly told about how important it is for freight to be able to move around the city and country. This has even been listed as one of the key reasons behind the RoNS projects. While anyone who reads this blog will know that I certainly don’t support all of the projects, I do agree that making it easy to move freight around is vitally important. In Auckland many our local roads actually carry a higher amount of freight than those RoNS projects.
The big problem for freight in Auckland seems to be that it tends to get caught up in congestion caused by huge numbers of private vehicles with only one person in them. Worse is that even with over $20 billion of new roads over the next 30 years, congestion is still forecast to get worse. The traditional way of alleviating congestion has been to widen or add new roads but as the city continues to develop, that only gets harder and more expensive to do. That is one of the key reasons why it is so important that we don’t just look at massive expensive projects as the only solution to traffic problems but that we also look to make better use of the roads we already have.
In my mind the improved rail network and our bus infrastructure help us do this and therefore enabling many more people to be moved around the city but there doesn’t seem to be much talk about similar solutions when it comes to freight movements. So perhaps what we need to be considering is adding dedicated truck lanes to some of the key freight routes like the motorways. The idea would work exactly the same way as bus lanes do in that trucks would be able to use these lanes to avoid traffic congestion. Doing so would then allow for freight to be able to be moved around the region much easier and it also removes one of the key arguments for continued widening of our roads.
It would leave us with three distinct networks, a PT network able to move huge volumes of people at any given time free of congestion, a freight network that is able to move large amounts of freight at any given time and a general purpose roading network for private cars but that is likely to suffer from congestion.
Now Auckland Transport do actually propose doing this in their Integrated Transport Programme but other than a brief mention of doing just what I’m suggesting above however there doesn’t seem to be any firm details. What’s more it only they only propose considering freight lanes on arterial roads, not motorways.
So what do you think, should we be putting freight lanes in?
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We already have freight lanes – they’re called railway lines and connect pretty well all of NZ. Only problem is that they’re getting mothballed and closed down due to Government ideology.
That doesn’t help in getting goods around the city though
No it doesn’t, however, it would solve a lot of issues in regards to PoA and if they made use of their rail links then there wouldn’t be calls for the Grafton Gully motorway to be extended at billions of dollars and the destruction of Parnell-Strand to achieve that. This whole argument for small commercial vehicles is the same argument trotted out by Banks for building the Eastern Highway and it doesn’t have any merit IMO.
I’m with bbc here. Shifting more freight with trucks instead of ships and trains is not where we should be heading in the 21st century. Sure, some freight will always need to go via truck, but we shouldn’t be encouraging this more than is absolutely necessary.
what Matt said, rail is no use for getting goods around the city, even where the destination of a shipment is close to a railway, the costs of loading and unloading onto and off the train exceed any savings made due to the mode.
i.e. you might load a container onto a train at the port, but it then needs to go to a freight depot and be unloaded onto a truck to go by road to the final destination even if it’s only half a kilometre. It’s cheaper and quicker to put it straight onto the truck.
I don’t think it is always cheaper just to put it on a truck right from the start. Having inland ports on the rail network close to large industrial areas makes a lot of sense. Ship comes in, containers get loaded onto a train and shipped straight to the inland port for processing. Trucks then pick up the goods from there and use truck lanes to get to the local businesses.
I was thinking more where the whole container was going to a single business
The problem with moving containers to an inland port by rail is that there is extra cost associated with loading and unloading containers onto the train. For this supply chain to be viable, the cost savings associated with transporting via train vs truck must out weight the cost of the extra loading movements. Transporting containers via train is very cheap over very long distances but becomes very expensive over short distances. This is why having an inland port in Auckland has been so successful for PoT whereas the PoAL’s inland port at Wiri struggles.
Also, PoAL’s rail exchange is further from its container terminals than its truck exchanges. This means that PoAL have to transport containers further to load them onto a train than to load them onto a truck. Usually straddle carriers would be used to do this which are by no means cheap to operate.
And finally, PoAL’s rail exchange has a very limited capacity. It only has four sidings and only one line in/out of the port. Also, it has to share the line with commuter rail services.
I totally agree that it would be great to see container traffic moved from trucks to rail but the simple fact is that a huge investment in rail infrastructure is required for this to become a seriously viable option for PoAL.
Trucking companies are perfectly able to buy property and build a road if they want one, but no they’re only pushing proposals like this because they know that most of the cost will simply be subsidised by ratepayers. Sounds like an idiotic idea, if anything trucks need more restrictions such as banning them from travelling in any lane except the left hand lane on motorways such as they do in Germany.
I haven’t seen them publicly pushing the idea but I certainly think it is worthwhile looking at. I know many readers on here think that trucks are evil but I don’t, it is important that trucks, and others who need to use the road e.g. tradesman, can get around. I would much rather road space be dedicated to them than expanding it just so more single occupant vehicles can cram in and block the lane up in the future.
I’m not quite sure why an electrician or plumber coming around to fix some things in my house need their own lanes, or why that would be more beneficial than allowing me to get to my place of work in a reliable manner? Furthermore, very few goods are time-sensitive and the vast majority could simply be moved at nights rather than in the middle of the peak. At the end of the day the only way this would be possible would be to either add lanes to roads at massive expense and destruction of place, or through removing lanes from general traffic and we’ve all seen how hard that’s been for bus lanes.
And no I don’t think trucks are evil per se, but I don’t think trucks with containers on their trailers have any place driving around roads in the city.
Tradesmen getting caught in congestion means they can’t do as many jobs per day and means that they need to charge more to make up for it. Further most goods probably aren’t practical to move at night. Sure you could do some containerised freight then but what about deliveries to retail stores, like supermarkets, are you going to require those stores to start employing overnight staff to process the deliveries. The thing is that freight isn’t just stuff in a container but is often a whole range of goods.
But Matt tradesmen use local roads, you’re not proposing freight lanes there are you? Even if you somehow get around the definition problem…?
No, just the major, multi lane arterials that have high freight volumes (and low bus volumes) and on the motorways.
Supermarkets, if they shut at night, generally do restocking of all the shelves at night anyway, many others are open 24hrs so there will be staff on site regardless. Supermarkets are ideal candidates for night deliveries as stock is usually collated elsewhere and then delivered in one large go.
Any such freight roads would likely be paid for by NZTA and so rate payers wouldn’t pay a cent.
Tax payers would
I think if you go out to the old Wiri Station Rd quarry, you might see from the road (or you do see from the south-western motorway) that they are putting in rail sidings. I would hope that someone has had teh bright idea to shunt containers from the port to that location, in an effort to get the truck to do both shorter/less busy roads, and also not have to do that Stanley Street climb up to the Viaduct
The sidings that have gone in on the western side of the track is for the new EMU depot that is being built. There is already an inland port on the eastern side of the tracks at Wiri.
Problem with “Freight lanes” is how do you define them.
Matt talks about two types of users – heavey trucks e.g. container trucks etc and also “tradesmen” type vehicles, which is some cases are little more than vans.
So, how do you setup a system which works for the full range of all these kinds of “freight” vehicles, which is easy to police/monitor and enforce.
No point having expensive dedicated lanes if they become general use is it through lack of proper enforcement?
I don’t have an answer, but perhaps in some cases, there is something in this.
The closest I can think of now is “slow lanes” on the northern motorway which trucks and other slow vehicles are supposed to use.
But is that what we’re talking about here or a completely separate road such as the Northern Busway but for trucks e.g. a “freight way” for trucks only?
And then exactly what size trucks can use it? everyone including the massive over 44 Tonne monsters road trains, or only trucks/trailers under 44 tonnes and where do you put the bottom weight range 5 Tonne? 2.5 Tonne?
All I can think is that residential area would want these anywhere near (especially if on a hill section due to excessive engine noise from the trucks going up or down the hill).
So where will they be, and where will they run from and to.
I was more thinking about painting one lane on specific, high freight carrying roads and motorways as freight lanes. It would be the same as re purposing a lane on an arterial as a bus lane.
NZTA currently allow HGVs to use the bypass lanes at a number of the ramp metered motorway onramps.
As couriers carry a lot of goods around the city, I have often wondered how you might differentiate them from plumbers and sparkies in their vans, but I think you’re probably right Matt, a goods and services lane (where are the italics when you need them?) would make a lot of sense in freeing up trades people’s time to work productively.
Well then you get in to some sticky territory. Why should tradesmen be freed up to work more productively and not, say, a consultant driving to a meeting, or an office worker on their way to work, or a sales rep doing their rounds?
The vastly improved PT network should help with dealing to a lot of those situations, especially the office worker.
I think freight lanes (which could be defined by vehicle weight minimums) on a FEW key arterials would definitely make sense. That said, I am worried that if THIS government latches on to the idea, we will soon have a dedicated program for such lanes that will exceed the PT investment budget…
You can make text italic, bold, underlined or what have you with HTML tags.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Help:HTML_in_wikitext#i
Well, not underlined apparently. do links work?
I’ve had an idea that freight lanes should be installed along most of SH16 between Grafton Gully and the port. In this area trucks the most important traffic, and should have priority over single vehicles. However in return for installing these truck lanes, trucks would be forced to use them. That means banning trucks from Quay St, Fanshawe St, Tamaki Drive, Kepa Road, Beach Road, Tangihua St and even regularly see port bound freight using Symonds St!
Trucks take the Symonds St at the CMJ, and head along Symonds, as the road has been prioritised for buses, so has less intersections than other roads for those heading the the Western Port entrance.
Agree that should be shifted to rail where possible, using inland ports at Onehunga railyards and Wiri. However the frequency of EMU services during the day will mean these will largely be relegated to night only.
I agree that trucks should be banned off all innercity streets but don’t agree that they should have their own lanes through the Strand area. I’d love to see the evidence that goods are going any faster being trucked out during the day rather than taken by rail to an inland port in bulk and the distributed, I’d also love to see an analysis of whether the health costs and environmental degradation that results from all these truck movements really provides an economic benefit that outweighs all these externalised costs. At most the goods have to wait a few additional hours before being moved, is this seriously something that makes much difference to the bulk of goods coming through PoA?
It is probably about 24 hour equipment use. Also would need more space on port if everything had to be stored for an extra 8 hours. Moving goods off wharf asap, and the arriving last minute is good way to reduce footprint, or at least lower the increased dredging proposed.
Also some good are bound for North Shore, West Auckland so rail not an option.
Still think rail could see a major increase in goods carried. Also wonder if barging could be looked at. For example is a small wharf at Mt Wellington, and one could be built at Highbrook too. Small inland ports could be set up here, and good barged/small boats used to get to port. Maybe this won’t work, but worth a look.
Another big issue is how many empty trucks you see going to and from port. More efficient trucking could lower the amount of empty trips, and thus cut number of journeys.
Not sure why we want to be spending vast amounts for moving freight faster, is it really that essential that your local store has that new plasma TV this afternoon at 4 rather than 5pm? Why should the time of a plumber have higher priority over that of a lawyer or doctor? What other successful city in world has done something similar and how on earth have they defined who should be able to use the lane?
I actually quite like the idea of freight only roads. You would first need to make sure you had some good port and rail connections and then the freight only roads would feed out from that on freight only roads before going on the general road network for the final mile.
Such a practice would improve road safety, reduce the cost of normal roads and make normal roads more pleasant to be around.
In an existing city however the only place such things would be possible would be on motorways.
“we could have a PT network that is able to move huge numbers of people, completely free of congestion”
I wasn’t to dispute the quoted statement. Experience overseas shows that well used public transport systems can be heavily congested no matter how extensive they are. Take London, for instance, with around 300 tube stations, a whole lot of railway stations, and dozens of lines. The congestion takes the form of people stuffed on to trains like sardines, big crowds queuing on station platforms, and a system that leaves tens of thousands of people in trouble if case of minor failures such as signal problems. I don’t know if people really are paid to push people on to trains in Tokyo or if that is an urban myth, but Tokyo’s trains also appear to suffer from heavy congestion.
My understanding is that crowding and congestion are different things. A crowded system is not the most comfortable way to get from A to B but doesn’t mean that getting from A to B takes longer than you planned on it taking – a delay, which is a different thing. I think lots of people get delayed in London, not so many (if any) in Tokyo, which has a high-functioning modern system.
Congestion is crowding on roads that because of the nature of road-transport also leads to lower than feasible speeds, frustration, and — for people that haven’t properly calibrated their expected journey travel times through bitter experience — delays. Congestion on roads also leads to the whole transport process operating less efficiently – lower rates of throughput, higher emissions, etc. Not so on a crowded grade-separated PT system.
Crowding on grade-separated PT needn’t lead to delays, just some temporary discomfort, which humans seem to adapt to pretty well (they listen to their iPods, check mail on their phones, read books, pick their noses, whatever it takes).
Crowded or congested rail systems slow down because of the required dwell time at stations while people squeeze on and off trains. Think of London where you need to allow time for people in the middle of carriages to wriggle their way down to the doors. But the biggest delays come from the minor failures. If a train is delayed five minutes where there is one train every fifteen minutes, then you can probably recover the schedule. But if you have one train every two minutes then the timetable will be a mess for hours. The problems multiply as people back up on the platforms and possibly the street, and the first train through after the stoppage will spend an inordinate amount of dwell time at the station while every last person tries to squeeze on board. To me this all seems similar to the congestion effects that slow down motor vehicles on roads that are near to capacity.
No to freight lanes in general, but longer slip lanes with better gradients are needed to allow slower moving vehicles to accelerate and merge efficiently.
What we really need is a driving culture change, for all road users to keep left on motorways unless overtaking and let others in. There is no enforcement like there is in civilised countries so driver aggression rules and probably nothing will change.
Failure to keep left on motorways is not just due to poor driver education. Its also how the law exists today.
Currently each lane of motorway is considered a separate road (some legal precedent from years ago apparently).
So, in law you can’t force slow people to keep left, as each lane is its own road.
I had never heard that, only that the first rule in the raod code is keep left unless passing.
The law is complicated as well as mostly unenforced, but you do definitely have to keep left if you are going slow enough to hold up other traffic. I do know someone who has been ticketed for not keeping in the left lane (among other things), on Wellington’s scenic Hutt Expressway.
You can read the rules at:
http://www.legislation.govt.nz/regulation/public/2004/0427/latest/DLM303041.html
http://www.legislation.govt.nz/regulation/public/2004/0427/latest/DLM303043.html
But you can see that the law definitely does treat motorways as one road with lanes.
1. Never happen.
2. If in another universe it did, the NZTA would draw funds from more local roads, forcing rate payers to make up more of the slack. In otherwords the rate payers will continue to subsidise the trucking industry/private motorist but in a very back handed way
This is actually the single biggest cause of the recent rates increases, caused by the National Government policies and they sit back, keeping their mouths shut and letting their lackies lambast Len Brown and the Auckland Council. Just doesn’t seem right.
Tokyo’s trains are often crowded, but they are always on time.
Interesting discussion. There are a lot of comments about whether or not there is much value in freight being able to move faster. Also comments about how to define freight vehicles, and whether other types of people might also have high value time. Others have questioned whether trucks deserve what would amount to a subsidy. Needless to say, with road pricing, we wouldn’t need commissars to decide what is best and of the most value, people could decide for themselves if their trip was valuable enough to justify paying the going rate.
I knew you were going to say that 😉
Yes thought you might have seen that coming! Couldn’t help myself.
Commissars? Puh-lease!
A bit of rhetorical flourish – I mean no offense to those who decide what lines and marks to paint on our roads
I think the idea of improving roads for freight’s benefits is a red herring.
I think only a very very small portion of our freight is so time critical that say a 20 minute time time saving will have a noticeable impact on the consumer of the freight service. I think there would be little benefit to my work if (say) a flooring material sample arrived at 8:30 am rather than 11am. some products like logs seem to be stockpiled for weeks at both ends of their journey.
The main argument towards freight only lanes seems to be that they will reduce the cost of freight by allowing truckies to do more trips per shift. I find this argument weak as most truck drivers seem to be relatively cheap to employ (Approx $15 – $25 per hour), and trucks seem sufficiently cheap that not all trucking companies bother to maximise their use via multiple shifts per day.
Passenger travel on the other hand is mostly time critical as any time spent traveling is time we cannot spend doing more productive activities.
Lets compare:
– A Truck driver on full of furniture, headed to the Distribution center of Harvey Norman.
– A specialist doctor driving from his morning surgery on the north shore to his afternoon surgery in middlemore (where he has been called in to support local surgeons with specialist operations)
– Three Engineering consultants in a car going a site visit, to assist with an industrial plant upgrade. (Me tomorrow)
– A financially struggling person rushing to their second job, to ensure there family is provided for.
I know what order i would prioritise them, and our dining chairs are looking pretty unimportant.
If any specialty lanes are going to be installed why not make them variable price HOT (high occupancy toll lanes – US style), or simply toll lanes, and let people decide the value of any time savings. I think this is better than assuming that all trucks are more important than cars because they carry stuff not people.
I would be worried about perverse incentives created by widespread adoption of truck only lanes. For example:
– Time saving incentives encouraging trucking companies to operate at night or outside of peak, increasing congesting and negative externalities.
– If I could save say 20mins on my commute I might consider buying something over 3.5 tonne and using that to commute in rather than my corolla. this would be bad for pollution, commuting cost, comfort, and (other peoples) safety. But I would save 40 mins a day 🙂
– Generally subsidising of the freight industry encouraging road freight where perhaps on site manufacture would have been a better option without the Indirect freight subsidy
That said I do like the truck lane for the southern motorway southbound onramp from the port. This lane prevents trucks from excessively polluting via stop start ramp signal pulsing, and incentivises trucks to take that on ramp rather than say the symonds street one where they would much more negatively impact on the urban environment.
There is a feasibility study of decicated truck lenes here if anybody is interested: http://www.i70dtl.org/images/TA_1_-_Literature_Review.pdf
thank you very much for the info
What about commercial vehicles being able to use bus lanes? Are they fully utlilised by buses at the moment? So this woudl be not just big trucks, smaller delivery trucks, concrete trucks, but tradespeoples vehicles