Celebrating achievement and sucess

Last week’s highlight was attending the NZ Road Transport Hall of Fame event at Bill Richardson Transport World in Invercargill. Thanks to HWR and particularly Shona, Joc and their team for another wonderful event that is firmly ensconced as one of, if not, the premier transport event of the year.  

Congratulations to the inductees: Wayne “Ox” McEwen (posthumous), Edwin Mansell, Geoffrey “Marty” Greaves, Cornelius van Opzeeland (posthumous), Gordon Soper and Greg Pert. Greg has been a Board member of Transporting New Zealand since I’ve been here, so for me that was very special. And thank you to the families and supporters that joined the evening to celebrate those achievements as they also played a part in that success. 

Things are always moving fast in our industry. There’s never enough time in the day to get everything that could be done, done, and it’s too easy to find the week’s passed and we haven’t reflected on how successful and resilient our industry is. 

Over the last several months we’ve been through another tough period, particularly with the challenges around fuel and the constrained capacity available to move freight by ship between the islands. Yet I’ve not heard of any supermarket shelves going bare. That’s an incredible demonstration of supply chain resilience to celebrate and there are some extraordinary contributions to that which makes the NZ Road Transport Hall of Fame so important. Thanks again to the Richardsons and HWR. 

NZTA

This week, a highlight was some good conversation with NZTA. We’ve been advocating that it be fair, reasonable and responsible in managing fuel price volatility on its roading projects and I’m pleased to say that it has agreed to extend those arrangements. We’ll be keeping a close eye on making sure that its contractors are playing the game in this regard.

Another area of conversation which seemed promising was shifting how we see and operate New Zealand’s road network. Currently it’s not operated as a single network – instead, the State Highway network and local roads are treated differently. However, there are many places where local roads can play a vital role in connecting regions or providing connections within a section of State Highway. 

Due to the networks being treated differently and constraints with local roads, when detours are required, they can be sub-optimal. They can be considerably longer than necessary and ironically that imposes a greater cost on the nation. It means more kilometres travelled so the freight costs are higher, more fuel, tyre and brake wear so bigger impact on environment, and higher risk exposure. That’s all counter to the Government Policy Statement on Land Transport.  

A recent example included a 10km detour being put in place despite a local road 2km option. When the detours apply over a relatively short period the administrative effort required to adjust pricing outweighs benefit and so in reality the transport operator wears the direct financial cost and the system wears the second order costs. The more this becomes appreciated the greater likelihood of change and I left our meeting feeling positive that there seems to be increasing recognition at NZTA that this is a problem and we need to approach things differently.

We also had an interesting conversation about the key beneficiaries of more generally increased transport productivity. I’ve always taken the view that getting the job done the most efficient and productive way is best for the consumer. During my days in fuel logistics, we outsourced our transport but we managed the stock, we directed the haulier on what product would be loaded on what truck and exactly when and where it would get delivered. Ultimately I was the customer of transport services and I was spending millions of dollars every month on that so getting it done more efficiently benefitted me, the customer, more than the transport operator.  

If you work broadly on the general premise that I do, which is, for anything more than relatively short-term detours, if trucks have to travel a longer distance, then it will cost more and provided they can pass it on then the transport operator’s revenue will increase. Therefore, ultimately the key “loser” of inefficiency in our supply chain is the consumer, not the transport operator.

Transporting New Zealand’s desire to improve road transport productivity is not driven by making more money for our members, it’s about doing what good for our economy. It was fascinating and useful to learn that not all key stakeholders might see it that way.  

Sector leadership

Other activities of note involved the good work in the livestock and petroleum transport sectors. Both have specialist equipment and systems tailored to their respective supply chains, and there is some great leadership from transport operators in proactively progressing quality assurance programmes. 

While livestock supply chain quality and assurance is driven by international customer demand and the National Livestock Transport and Safety Council is key in improving that, in fuel the Petroleum Industry Transport Safey Forum is leading the charge in considering whether an Australian assurance programme can be adopted here. These assurance programmes are specifically tailored to the specialist nature of those sectors and don’t duplicate other foundation assurance systems like CoF or the TSL so should add value and it’s great to see industry leading self in these areas.  

Road Rule changes

In case you’re unaware, yesterday, 1 October, some new road rules came into force. In summary they are: 

• Drivers must leave a minimum 1.5-metre gap when overtaking vulnerable road users traveling in the same direction, such as cyclists, pedestrians, and horse riders.  

• Children aged 12 and under are legally allowed to ride bikes on footpaths, and parents, caregivers, teachers, or older siblings can ride alongside them to supervise.  

• E-scooters may use designated cycle lanes.  

• On roads with speed limits of 60 km/h or less, drivers must give way to buses pulling out from bus stops or the roadside, provided the bus driver has signalled their intent for at least 3 seconds prior. 

Read more about the changes here.

Dom Kalasih, Chief Executive of Transporting New Zealand