The funding of eight key road projects will help reduce cost of living across Australia according to Australian Trucking Association Chair Mark Parry.
The eight projects have been identified as part of the ATA’s federal election campaign initiatives on building better roads and paying for them fairly.
The eight projects are:
- New South Wales: upgrade the Sheahan Bridge on the Hume Highway at Gundagai and extend parking bays to allow as of right access to the Hume Highway for 36.5 metre A-doubles.
- Victoria: maintain the Australian Government’s contribution to the non-tolled components of North East Link. The project will complete Melbourne’s orbital system, improve access and reduce travel times.
- Queensland: upgrade the Inland Freight Route to establish an alternative to the Bruce Highway between Mungindi and Charters Towers.
- Queensland: replace the westbound Bremer River Bridge on the Warrego Highway near Ipswich. The westbound bridge was built in 1958 and has cracks in its steel girders.
- South Australia: build the Greater Adelaide Bypass to a standard that would allow trucks to bypass the Adelaide Hills at the open road speed limit. The Australian Government should cover 80 per cent of the cost of the bypass.
- Western Australia: upgrade the Great Eastern Highway from Perth to the Goldfields.
- Tasmania: complete the duplication of the Bass Highway between Launceston and Devonport.
- Northern Territory: comprehensively address the flood immunity of the Stuart Highway. The Stuart Highway is an essential link between the Northern Territory and southern Australia; flooding results in food shortages across the territory.
“The Australian Government will spend more than $120 billion on land transport infrastructure over ten years, but those investments need to be targeted at projects to help us move Australia’s freight at lower cost,” Parry says.
“In New South Wales, for example, we are calling on the next government to upgrade the Sheahan Bridge on the Hume Highway at Gundagai and extend parking bays to allow as of right access to the Hume Highway for 36.5 metre A-doubles.
“Switching from conventional semitrailers to A-doubles would enable us to move the same amount of freight in half the number of trips, while using just 72 per cent of the fuel.
“In South Australia, the government needs to fund the Greater Adelaide Bypass to a standard that would allow high productivity trucks to bypass the Adelaide Hills at the open road speed limit. The Australian Government should cover 80 per cent of the project’s cost.
“The critical road project in the Northern Territory is for the government to comprehensively address the flood immunity of the Stuart Highway. The Stuart Highway is an essential link between the Northern Territory and southern Australia; flooding results in food shortages across the territory.”
Parry also asserts a distance-based road user charging system for electric vehicles should be developed by the next government to ensure the owners of these vehicles pay a fair cost for the building and maintenance of roads.
“In the Vanderstock case, the High Court held that imposing road user charges on electric vehicles was an Australian Government responsibility. The ATA was a party in this case. We wanted to make sure that national trucking businesses didn’t end up paying electric vehicle charges at eight different rates under eight different payment systems,” Parry continues.
“The next government should develop a new road user charging system for the electric vehicles, to come into force for electric light vehicles once they make up 30 per cent of light vehicle sales, and then for electric heavy vehicles once they reach 30 per cent of heavy vehicle sales.”
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