The National Heavy Vehicle Regulator has announced a series of webinars to help industry and road managers acclimatise to its new interactive tool, Freight PASS.
Freight PASS, a new, interactive tool launched by the NHVR on October 17, 2023, is designed to help industry and road managers make more informed safety, productivity, and sustainability decisions about the benefits of heavy vehicle combinations on the road network. According to NHVR CEO Sal Petroccitto OAM, the new Freight PASS uses more than one million registration data records to assess a range of performance factors for conventional and Performance Based Standards (PBS) vehicles including crash likelihood, trip numbers and travel time, and fuel consumption.
“The Freight PASS will improve the speed, accuracy and consistency when making decisions about using safer and more productive vehicles, to meet Australia’s growing freight task and zero emission targets,” Mr Petroccitto said. “The tool has been developed by linking datasets across governments, industry, research agencies and the NHVR to produce a robust and reliable information source for use by industry and road managers.”
The platform allows the user to input scenario data including the type of vehicle, trip length, average speed, and commodity to estimate time, crash rate, fuel consumption, carbon emissions, and estimate costs or savings from longer or shorter routes.
In an example provided by the NHVR, the tool shows that a 30m PBS A-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.
Australian Trucking Association CEO Mathew Munro said the new technology would support evidence-based decisions and improve consistency across state and territory borders.
“This is a terrific initiative that will enable operators to leverage technology to support streamlined and consistent access decisions,” Mr Munro said. “We’re working with the NHVR 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, according to the NHVR, is the first of a suite of productivity related tools to be released for consultation in the coming months.
The project team behind the new interactive tool will host webinars discussing why and how Freight PASS was developed, detail on the selection of source material, the consultation process, and an ensuing Q&A.
The four webinars are on November 27, November 29, December 11, and December 13, and run for approximately an hour.
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