National convergence: meeting the growing freight task on a congested network

A rapid expansion in freight, particularly road freight, is leading to increasing conflict between heavy and light vehicles in urban areas and some congested inter-urban links. Community concern over noise, safety, environmental and amenity impacts of heavy vehicles is growing. This points to the need for innovative approaches to developing transport policy, including network planning and design, road pricing and vehicle regulation. The aim of this paper is to outline an integrated package of reforms and actions needed to meet the challenge of servicing a growing freight task safely and efficiently. It issues a challenge to traffic planners to plan for the growing role of heavy vehicles to service the growing freight task. The paper also discusses the challenges of delivering reform under the National Transport Commission (NTC) model of cooperative federalism. (a) For the covering entry of this conference, please see ITRD abstract no. E216297.