The problem of trucks in urban and suburan streets

[opik_bidin]

So you all plan on paying a lot more for your buildings, your housing, your renovations, your landscaping, your groceries, your cruises, your garbage collection, your road, water, sewerage, electricity maintenance and mail cause cyclist feel intimidated by trucks and want to ban or change the design, really. Do you realise the cost of changing massive transport infrastructure which ultimately will be passed onto the end user, ie you.
Personally, I think truck drivers should be banding together to ban deliveries in cities and see how long you survive.

Let's have a real cost talk of trucks vs rails and multi modal.
what is it really the cost? How much for road maintenance? how much for road building? how much for the insurance and gas miles? how much is the cost for every crash and delay? how much for the bad air quality and sound polution?

There will always be trucks, but what is being done now is dangerous. Too many trucks, too little rails.

Even in the last news @Tholgette shared, the producers acknowledge that rail is better. They pay more using trucks you know? So you plan to pay more for sending the products and have damaged and dangerous roads rather by rail?

[rokwiz]

So you all plan on paying a lot more for your buildings, your housing, your renovations, your landscaping, your groceries, your cruises, your garbage collection, your road, water, sewerage, electricity maintenance and mail cause cyclist feel intimidated by trucks and want to ban or change the design, really. Do you realise the cost of changing massive transport infrastructure which ultimately will be passed onto the end user, ie you.
Personally, I think truck drivers should be banding together to ban deliveries in cities and see how long you survive.

Let's have a real cost talk of trucks vs rails and multi modal.
what is it really the cost? How much for road maintenance? how much for road building? how much for the insurance and gas miles? how much is the cost for every crash and delay? how much for the bad air quality and sound polution?

There will always be trucks, but what is being done now is dangerous. Too many trucks, too little rails.

Even in the last news @Tholgette shared, the producers acknowledge that rail is better. They pay more using trucks you know? So you plan to pay more for sending the products and have damaged and dangerous roads rather by rail?

Rail is only cheap (and I doubt that) because it takes so looooooong to send anything via it. If you don't mind waiting 5 days for freight by rail to get to it's destination. The truck has turned and burned 3 times by the same time the train gets to the rail head yard, then has to be unloaded, its got to go by truck to a warehouse, then its has to be trucked again to your house, supermarket etc. Mate I live between the Hume Hwy and the main Sydney to Melb rail line, the rail corridor is totally inefficient and has many problems with sink holes, speed restrictions, heat (buckled lines) . I keep hearing about how wonderful the new inland freight line is going to be but what they don't tell you is how its going to shut our train service down while ARTC rips apart what took them so long to fix when they duplicated the line south of Albury 10 yrs ago. the line is still moving and sinking on a regular basis, the XPT is a painfully slow way to travel to Melb.

Freight trains are great, I love watching them crawl by but on the same account I like watching the big rigs on the Hume at night. "Keep on truckin"
Everything you have came in a truck at some point.

[biker jk]

So you all plan on paying a lot more for your buildings, your housing, your renovations, your landscaping, your groceries, your cruises, your garbage collection, your road, water, sewerage, electricity maintenance and mail cause cyclist feel intimidated by trucks and want to ban or change the design, really. Do you realise the cost of changing massive transport infrastructure which ultimately will be passed onto the end user, ie you.
Personally, I think truck drivers should be banding together to ban deliveries in cities and see how long you survive.

Let's have a real cost talk of trucks vs rails and multi modal.
what is it really the cost? How much for road maintenance? how much for road building? how much for the insurance and gas miles? how much is the cost for every crash and delay? how much for the bad air quality and sound polution?

There will always be trucks, but what is being done now is dangerous. Too many trucks, too little rails.

Even in the last news @Tholgette shared, the producers acknowledge that rail is better. They pay more using trucks you know? So you plan to pay more for sending the products and have damaged and dangerous roads rather by rail?

Rail is only cheap (and I doubt that) because it takes so looooooong to send anything via it. If you don't mind waiting 5 days for freight by rail to get to it's destination. The truck has turned and burned 3 times by the same time the train gets to the rail head yard, then has to be unloaded, its got to go by truck to a warehouse, then its has to be trucked again to your house, supermarket etc. Mate I live between the Hume Hwy and the main Sydney to Melb rail line, the rail corridor is totally inefficient and has many problems with sink holes, speed restrictions, heat (buckled lines) . I keep hearing about how wonderful the new inland freight line is going to be but what they don't tell you is how its going to shut our train service down while ARTC rips apart what took them so long to fix when they duplicated the line south of Albury 10 yrs ago. the line is still moving and sinking on a regular basis, the XPT is a painfully slow way to travel to Melb.

Freight trains are great, I love watching them crawl by but on the same account I like watching the big rigs on the Hume at night. "Keep on truckin"
Everything you have came in a truck at some point.

If there was full cost recovery from the trucking industry (for damage to roads, road deaths and injuries, pollution and congestion) then the proceeds could be spent on upgrading rail freight lines. While trucking is subsidised by taxpayers will will continue to consume too much of it and not enough of rail freight.

[rokwiz]

The whole trucking industry in Oz is based on time sensitive loads (us the public want our stuff now !!) no rail line can match that. I look forward to the day I see a freight train run past here doing 200km/h + which can compete with the trucking industry. You can throw billions upon billions of dollars at it but it still couldn't complete by the time its unloaded and reloaded several times during its passage to us the consumers home.
Average Joe in Sydney wants his fresh morning avo in the supermarket at 7 am and will complain if his banana's have been held up in Newcastle due traffic delays caused by one occupant car commuters.
Perhaps we should ban all private cars off the road during peak to allow all the vital truck shipments to get to their destination for distribution.

[opik_bidin]

Let's have a real cost talk of trucks vs rails and multi modal.
what is it really the cost? How much for road maintenance? how much for road building? how much for the insurance and gas miles? how much is the cost for every crash and delay? how much for the bad air quality and sound polution?

There will always be trucks, but what is being done now is dangerous. Too many trucks, too little rails.

Even in the last news @Tholgette shared, the producers acknowledge that rail is better. They pay more using trucks you know? So you plan to pay more for sending the products and have damaged and dangerous roads rather by rail?

Rail is only cheap (and I doubt that) because it takes so looooooong to send anything via it. If you don't mind waiting 5 days for freight by rail to get to it's destination. The truck has turned and burned 3 times by the same time the train gets to the rail head yard, then has to be unloaded, its got to go by truck to a warehouse, then its has to be trucked again to your house, supermarket etc. Mate I live between the Hume Hwy and the main Sydney to Melb rail line, the rail corridor is totally inefficient and has many problems with sink holes, speed restrictions, heat (buckled lines) . I keep hearing about how wonderful the new inland freight line is going to be but what they don't tell you is how its going to shut our train service down while ARTC rips apart what took them so long to fix when they duplicated the line south of Albury 10 yrs ago. the line is still moving and sinking on a regular basis, the XPT is a painfully slow way to travel to Melb.

Freight trains are great, I love watching them crawl by but on the same account I like watching the big rigs on the Hume at night. "Keep on truckin"
Everything you have came in a truck at some point.

If there was full cost recovery from the trucking industry (for damage to roads, road deaths and injuries, pollution and congestion) then the proceeds could be spent on upgrading rail freight lines. While trucking is subsidised by taxpayers will will continue to consume too much of it and not enough of rail freight.

That subsidy point is the thing forgotten in the conversation between motorised vehicles vs public transit and cycling.

And also, why in rail goods and human should be separated but in roads they're allowed to mix?

[rokwiz]

So is this about money then is it ? They can equally subsidise rail until the cows come home but it will never compete with road transport here, or NZ, or US, or Canada and probably most of Europe. Its all about viability but I guess ARTC wouldn't know much about that as they can't even build a reliable railway line.
I think most punters are under the impression it will operate like a passenger high speed rail network but freight can not operate in those conditions. ie top heavy, weight amount of diesel power to pull long doubles. As it is, the XPT can barely make in over Bethungra loop with 7 carriages one reason it mainly operates pulling 5 cars.

[Thoglette]

The whole trucking industry in Oz is based on time sensitive loads (us the public want our stuff now !!) no rail line can match that. I look forward to the day I see a freight train run past here doing 200km/h + which can compete with the trucking industry. You can throw billions upon billions of dollars at it but it still couldn't complete by the time its unloaded and reloaded several times during its passage to us the consumers home.

That's a lovely narrative but completely unhinged from reality.

Firstly, the vast majority of freight is not time critical. The driver may be being paid by the load, but that dirt she's hauling from the CBD to woopwoop; the "fresh" fruit and veges for Coleworth; the lead/wheat/tin/cheese/bricks/cows or Gerry's white goods are not time critical.

Time critical stuff goes to the airport or in a white van. And is priced accordingly. Everything else goes via a consolidation centre out in some industrial centre. Where it's loaded and unloaded umpteen times. Either as a seacontainer or pallet or as a box.

Ultimately it goes to some retailers warehouse (or store) where it's handled again and broken down into individual units. If it is being delivered to an urban or suburban location it will (again) be in a white van. Not a B-double.

Yes, our train lines are a disgrace (add onto that an ossified rail industry who are still using processes written down when steam was a thing.): the result of many decades of "the roads are the future" and then "fix the roads" (by that we mean build more) from lobbyists from various parts of industry, including the trucking companies who want their free run on the public purse to continue.

And they're quite happy for the narrative you've put forward, of a unified and homogeneous "trucking industry" to persist. They'll talk about "battling owner operators" while ignoring that the vast majority of work goes via big corporations. And ignoring the unethical and dangerous ways in which many of the poor old drivers are contracted.

[rokwiz]

Mate, you need to live in the country for a while and see our brand new 10 year old, rail line ARTC destroyed while trying to build it to standard gauge, ask anyone who lives along this rail corridor what they think of the "new" line. Its not neglected as Its being constantly stuffed up by Govco ARTC. Typical half arse government dept.
Have you ever worked in the trucking industry as you don't know what your talking about. According to every customer every truck load of whatever is important and has to be there by...... time sensitive goes overnight.

[Thoglette]

Mate, you need to live in the country for a while .

Weren't we talking about the whole country a moment ago? Not 10% of it. But, yes, I've sat on the end of the "overnight" freight that goes from BNE to ADL via SYD then gets lost in the warehouse (or shipped to the wrong state) before getting on the road train to Darwin. Where it gets lost in another warehouse, well, not really lost. They were going to tell me it arrived eventually....

Have you ever worked in the trucking industry as you don't know what your talking about. According to every customer every truck load of whatever is important and has to be there by...... time sensitive goes overnight.

I'm a long term customer of the trucking industry and I have a good understanding of the difference between what is demanded of the drivers and what is actually delivered (let alone necessary).

And yes, there's some companies who think that this new-fangled JIT thing they read in HBR at the Qantas lounge means keeping all their stock in Parramatta. Or Singapore. And somehow, flogging the drivers is going to turn this into a "service experience".

But we're getting off topic.

[fat and old]

Even in the last news @Tholgette shared, the producers acknowledge that rail is better. They pay more using trucks you know? So you plan to pay more for sending the products and have damaged and dangerous roads rather by rail?

Let’s look at this then. Pay more using trucks.

If the situation changes with rail on Eyre Peninsula and it becomes efficient and cost effective compared to road freight, we will certainly reconsider our options

Either the Vitarra fella is stupid or telling fibs....and about to cost his business major dollars, or you are wrong. There’s a bloke from the SA Freight council weighing in too...

The executive officer of the SA Freight Council, Evan Knapp, said he was disappointed that the maintenance and investment costs of the rail line have risen to the point that it is no longer economic for Viterra to move grain on that network.

So he must be pretty dumb too. He actually says he’d prefer the rail be looked at in more detail

"One of things we need to realise is that if you add thousands of extra trucks on the road your maintenance costs go up, so there is a case here for the State Government to spend money on the rail rather than extra money on the roads."

.

The only real criticism came from a grower

David Bascombe farms just outside of Port Lincoln in the Poonindie Hills and said his biggest concern will be the congestion on the roads and at the silos.

He said the rail was shut for a short time last year and the turnaround from a 10 kilometre trip to Port Lincoln for him to deliver grain was four hours.

"Next harvest will be worse because Port Lincoln is just a bottleneck of trucks where you have no room to move," he said.

The Fat and Old Fact Checker classes your statement as

Misleading

Worse, as Thoglette points out this is drifting off topic. But hey, he posted the article....

[biker jk]

A nice article quantifying all the costs of trucking versus rail freight.

https://usa.streetsblog.org/2015/06/02/ ... each-year/

[fat and old]

The last decent drain I laid was in Parkville, maybe 2 km from the cbd. We were taking 6 truck/quad dogs of crushed rock per day, and carting out more than that (loose fill bulks up). Those quad dogs gave us over 30 ton of product, I can’t remember exact figures. We can work with 30 ton for this.

Rail was not an option for obvious reasons. In fact, we tried to use rail to cart out of North Melbourne station in ‘09 when rebuilding it but it was deemed to difficult (I believe rail was used successfully by contractors when Southern Cross Station was rebuilt however).

At app. 100kg per load, I would need 300 ecargo bike loads for each truck, or 1,800 loads per day. They would need to ride in from up to 50 km away from site, then return, so I reckon 1 load per bike per day. That’s 1,800 ecargo bikes, on the road all day. That’s some serious congestion, right there!

[Thoglette]

Either the Vitarra fella is stupid or telling fibs....and about to cost his business major dollars, or you are wrong.

He's telling the (half) truth that he sees: he can either pay full (or likely inflated) cost (via rail) or he can pay a fraction of the true cost (via trucks). He doesn't give a flying duck about anything other than what the share price is and the resultant effect on his compensation package.

Who'd like to bet that the public purse paid for both the road and rail services? And that the rail was privatised to improve efficiency or competition or somesuch a while back. Now the public purse will have to pay for the road and other damage of the trucks.

Once upon a time trucking companies actually paid full costs to level the playing field but that all ended in the sixties (IIRC).

[opik_bidin]

Either the Vitarra fella is stupid or telling fibs....and about to cost his business major dollars, or you are wrong.

He's telling the (half) truth that he sees: he can either pay full (or likely inflated) cost (via rail) or he can pay a fraction of the true cost (via trucks). He doesn't give a flying duck about anything other than what the share price is and the resultant effect on his compensation package.

Who'd like to bet that the public purse paid for both the road and rail services? And that the rail was privatised to improve efficiency or competition or somesuch a while back. Now the public purse will have to pay for the road and other damage of the trucks.

Once upon a time trucking companies actually paid full costs to level the playing field but that all ended in the sixties (IIRC).

It does give a taste of what its like to be a ped or cyclists for car drivers. that is why in many places trucks and busses speed limit is half of the cars, as there will be carnage. wonder why we can't apply some mototrist logic and the speed should be the same (as trucks and bus are more important and must arrive quicker as they carry more goods/people), and it's the car drivers fault if they are crushed by trucks/busses

[Thoglette]

Commentary from the head of Freight Rail Australia: Dalla Valle condemns Australia’s ‘truck explosion’ who notes a 27% increase in the registration of heavy trucks in 2018 and also the constant stretching of rules to allow bigger and bigger trucks on major roads such as a recent decision to allow B-quads on NSW and QLD roads.

In the past, Dalla Valle says trucks have provided the ‘first and last mile’ portion of the freight journey. But he says years of regulation has facilitated a dominance of trucks on many routes which should be serviced by rail.

And coming back to basic (carbon is fuel consumed) and direct costs:

A 2017 report from Deloitte found road freight produces 14 times the accident costs, and 16 times as much carbon pollution, compared to rail freight, on a per tonne kilometre basis.

Apparently, approving a 105 ton road train is "innovative" as opposed to crazy stupid

[fat and old]

It does give a taste of what its like to be a ped or cyclists for car drivers. that is why in many places trucks and busses speed limit is half of the cars, as there will be carnage.

Speed limit of half? Where's that happen?

[human909]

Apparently, approving a 105 ton road train is "innovative" as opposed to crazy stupid

On the right roads with the right drivers I don't see a big issue. The consequences from a B-Double isn't too much difference from road train.

In my limited experience with road trains they are some of the better truck drivers out there.

[Thoglette]

The consequences from a B-Double isn't too much difference from road train.

(I presume you meant B-quad) Probably not: perhaps 20 times the accident costs vs 16 times. Not sure if the axle weight has gone up and therefore the road damage. And the back-end won't wander around under brakes much more than a B-double .

The real issue is the creeping normalisation of ultra heavy road transport. As you said, there's a place for these things and mostly it's on closed, private roads on mines that don't justify their own railway. It's not the Pacific Highway (nor the Birdsville track).

In my limited experience with road trains they are some of the better truck drivers out there.

While I agree, you're setting a very low bar

[fat and old]

In my limited experience with road trains they are some of the better truck drivers out there.

While I agree, you're setting a very low bar

That's a little bit unfair...that's a light truck used by a concreto. he's not even a "truck driver". He drives a truck to cart his timbers etc about. Hardly a road train or semi. I know, they do some dodgy crap as well, and you'll probably be able to find one easy but sheesh.

I still want to know where these truck/bus limits are half that of a car?

[Thoglette]

That's a little bit unfair...that's a light truck used by a concreto. he's not even a "truck driver". He drives a truck to cart his timbers etc about. Hardly a road train or semi. I know, they do some dodgy crap as well, and you'll probably be able to find one easy but sheesh.

Don't disagree with a word you said. It just happened to be on my desktop.

Meanwhile, some good news regarding "real" truckers-in-suburbia.

ARC is planning to build an intermodal hub in Kenwick, (So'east of Perth) which should take 200,000 teus (I presume per annum) off suburban roads in Fremantle. That's several thousand trucks a week.

And Pacific National is to build an intermodal hub in Penrith, for 300,000 teus and claiming it will remove 70,000 truck trips (pa) from Sydney roads.

[Thoglette]

Trucks Do Not Have Cyclist-Obscuring Blind Spots, Shows Truck Driver Who Cycles

“It’s not a blind spot, it’s a fail-to-look-spot,” says truck driver Clive Matthews to the claim that trucks have blind spots that lead to fatalities on Britain’s roads.

Lots of arguments between TfL and Mr Matthews.

[Thoglette]

BN/BV says A new safety standard for heavy vehicles needed (22 Oct 2019)

They've made a submission to the Heavy Vehicle National Law Review calling for

All heavy vehicles to be fitted with class V mirrors, and reversing/blind spot cameras, giving the driver a better view of road users around their vehicles
All heavy vehicles to be fitted with side underrun protection to protect bike riders from being dragged under the wheels in the event of a crash
All heavy vehicles to be fitted with audible left turn warning and reverse squawker alert systems to communicate heavy vehicle movements to all road users
Require that state and federal government projects only employ trucking companies who comply with the above safety improvements
Incentivise a movement towards low-cab and direct vision heavy vehicles over the next 10 years.

[opik_bidin]

BN/BV says A new safety standard for heavy vehicles needed (22 Oct 2019)

They've made a submission to the Heavy Vehicle National Law Review calling for

All heavy vehicles to be fitted with class V mirrors, and reversing/blind spot cameras, giving the driver a better view of road users around their vehicles
All heavy vehicles to be fitted with side underrun protection to protect bike riders from being dragged under the wheels in the event of a crash
All heavy vehicles to be fitted with audible left turn warning and reverse squawker alert systems to communicate heavy vehicle movements to all road users
Require that state and federal government projects only employ trucking companies who comply with the above safety improvements
Incentivise a movement towards low-cab and direct vision heavy vehicles over the next 10 years.

good move by them, as the truck association has also pushed for higher standards, I think some pedestrian and motorcycle association should also push for something similar

[brumby33]

It seems that this conversation on trucks is going all over the place, I thought it was about trucks on local and Urban streets, not Nationally and Interstate.
The number of trucks that have came to be on our local roads, particularly in Sydney where construction of Motorways, new rail infrastructure and High rise apartments have increased 50 fold (or so it seems) everywhere you go now there's a construction project going on and the amount of trucks like tipper and dog trailers have exploded in recent years.
The Dog trailers are getting huge, many of them Quad axles that can handle around 29T plus that of the Towing tipper of 12T so you have 41T of dirt in most of them. Many of these trucks have been converted into tippers from former Interstate Prime movers pulling B-Dble trailers and often have up to and over 600 Diesel Horsepower and the drivers use everyone of those Horses whether they're in town or on the Highway. They extend the Chassis and install Hydraulics and hoists and most Gearboxes I think have a PTO (Power Take OFF) facilities to operate the Hydraulic pump.
Having been in this Industry for a bit, many of these drivers have come from the Highway doing the old Sesame Street runs (Hume HWY) they scare the bejesus out of me.
Notice a Dog Trailer on it's side out on The wallgrove Rd on the News last night...wonder how that happened!!

With the Amount of trucks on Sydney's arterial roads lately, I'm surprised that there's not more fatalities involving trucks n cars, as many drivers drive these trucks like racing cars, many over the speed limit. Not all of them, just some and roads like Parramatta road whilst fairly wide, have had their lanes narrowed to accommodate more traffic and each side of a truck's wheels are right up against the white lines, there's just no room for error and some of the car driver's antics of flicking between lanes trying to get advantage often leave little room for trucks to brake.

Container trucks don't seem to be too bad generally because there's usually not such a rush to get them from point A to B but in the dirt world, the pay per tonne/km isn't real high and there's a lot of competition to get back for the next load.
A boss I had once got stuck into me because I stopped off to the side of the road to eat my sandwich.

If there is a major Positive about so many trucks on the road, the economy is doing ok, the unemployment is generally low and business is getting done. The Transport Industry can tell a lot on how the Country's economy is doing overall.

brumby33

[Thoglette]

[url=https://medium.com/sidewalk-talk/the-fu ... fd8e2c0263]The future of last-mile delivery has arrived … in a small Dutch city[url]

Nijmegen is home to the world’s first successful neighborhood freight hub. Why has it worked out where others failed?

It uses e-bikes and small vans within the inner city and has a large, conventional warehouse at the edge near a major transit route. The aim was to reduce the number of large trucks in the core of the city.

The inner city service has three key elements

One: it is a non-governmental organization: not a competitor to the freight companies's nor is it a government agency.

Two: core revenue comes via payments from freight companies for last-mile deliveries: delivers cost/time saving to those companies. Plus delivering other services to receivers and residents, such as storage, home deliveries, clean waste collection etc. for fees.

Finally:

Perhaps the most crucial move Hendriks made was to start recruiting customers not from the big trucking companies, but rather from the shops, hotels, and restaurants on the receiving end. By engaging directly with receivers, Hendriks cut right to the heart of the problem. “The independent small shopkeepers make the biggest mess when it comes to traffic movements,” she says, “because they order high frequency and small volumes — because they don’t have cash, because they don’t have space.”

While those small businesses were the ones most affected by truck traffic in terms of negative impacts on the neighborhoods where they were trying to attract customers, they had never before had any say about how deliveries were made. They just placed orders and essentially took what they could get in terms of transport. Hendriks’s vision was to give them agency.

There's now about dozen such goods hubs with common IT and admin support (see https://goederenhubs.nl/home if your Dutch is any good.)

They note that the takeup in the US has been low and is likely to remain so as long as speed and profitability (as measured by "the free market") remain the sole objectives of transport policy