Ada Ma Way!

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The New South Wales Government’s dictatorial roads department, the RTA-come-RMS, has again kowtowed to the trucking lobby by deciding in its infantile wisdom to remove centre double lines from the Hawkesbury Road through the Blue Mountains west of Sydney, so that big sand trucks with trailers (basically ‘B-Doubles‘) can hog both sides of the highway.

Looka Me Looka Me Looka Me!

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The idiots in the fancy new RTA-come-RMA headquarters in Parramatta want no restrictions on truck-length, no speed restrictions for these trucks along Hawkesbury Road – the bigger trucks the better, God Damn!

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Strategy to avoid a B-Double

An Outback vernacular joke, not so funny…

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Outback Crash

Often the End of Everyone’s Story!

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It’s a Northern Territory Outback Approach – unlimited speed and road trains – despite Hawkesbury Road winding tightly down the mountain at Hawkesbury Heights and passing through residential areas between Springwood and Richmond.

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Winmalee ain’t trucking Tennant Creek!

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According to Hawkesbury Road residents typically 90 tipper trucks with dog trailers (basically B-Doubles) hoon along the road daily.

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In late 2012, the RTA-come-RMS removed the centre line marking on four hairpin bends at Hawkesbury Heights so that bigger trucks can cross the center of the road without crossing over centre double lines because the double lines have been painted over.

No centre lines, no road centre, see, just like Mount Panorama!   No speed cameras, no police patrols, speeding cowboy truckers out of control.  Car, motorbike and pedestrian traffic are just collateral damage.

Bugger!

Truck rollover along Mill Road at Kurrajong in the Blue Mountains

Cowboy Trucker going too fast – nuh.

[Source:  Photo by Top Notch Video, in article ‘Lucky Easter accident escape’, 20120412, by Cerise Burgess, journalist, Hawkesbury Gazette, ^http://www.hawkesburygazette.com.au/story/273890/lucky-easter-accident-escape/]

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The local Blue Mountains Council has rightly branded the RTA-come-RMS decision to remove these double centre lines as “absolutely insane”‘, “ridiculous” and “plain criminal” at its councillor meeting on 23rd April 23 2013.   Councillor Brendan Christie stated, “I just think it is completely ridiculous that six bureaucrats from the RMS sat down for a nice lunch and this is all they could come up with.”

Blue Mountains Council’s delegated Local Traffic Committee:  Minutes of Meeting 20130326

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Two years ago in 2011, the Blue Mountains Council reported on a Road Safety Action Plan.    The report identified that:

<<the Blue Mountains has almost triple the amount of speed related crashes than the Sydney Region. Our rate of 33.73% is almost double that of the rate of NSW. This  makes reducing speeding on our roads a clear road safety priority for the Blue Mountains community.>>

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The report also identified trucks as a key issue:

<<The Blue Mountains has a significantly higher proportion of trucks  involved in crashes than the Sydney Region, Western Sydney or NSW.

Over a five year period, light trucks constituted 9.53% of crashes in the Blue Mountains. This can be compared with 7.85% in Sydney, 8.31% in Western Sydney and 8.67% in New South Wales as a whole. The Blue Mountains also experienced significant increases in crashes involving trucks over the last five years.>>

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>Read Plan (PDF, 450kb)

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Yet at the same time, the Blue Mountains Council is similarly embracing more trucks transiting through Blue Mountains by planning a new truck route through native bushland habitat  and over the headwaters of Fitzgerald Creek and carved through critically endangered Sydney Turpentine Ironbark Forest in protected Deanii Reserve.

Example of a Sydney Turpentine Ironbark Forest

[Source: ^http://www.georgesriver.org.au/Riverkeeper-Photo-Gallery.html]

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The Council has already spent $77,000 on a study to consider possible route options for a truck link road between Hawkesbury Road and the Great Western Highway at Valley Heights.     The preferred route necessitates massively increasing the road weight limit, creating a two-lane, three-span bridge 35 metres above Fitzgerald Creek with a total the project construction cost of $26 million, all to encourage more trucks through the Blue Mountains.

Borrowing the same mealy-mouthed spin as the RTA-come-RMS, the Council’s consultants try to justify the new road would “improve traffic flow and reduce delays.”  No doubt its environmental impact statement would be conjured up by darkside ecologists to pretend the road works and bridge works would cause minimal impact to endangered ecology.

The initial council study will go on public exhibition soon with a report back to council in August 2013.  We shall be ready to rip the EIS apart, or will it be watered down to another Review of Environmental Effects as per usual?

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[Source:  ‘Springwood link road plan’, 20130508, by Shane Desiatnik, journalist, Blue Mountains Gazette, ^http://www.bluemountainsgazette.com.au/story/1486914/routes-named-for-springwood-link-road-plan/]

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Truck rollover  in the Blue Mountains April, 2005

RTA-come-RMS is giving tacit approval for truckers to use excessive speed and ignore common safety measures.

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The RTA-come-RMS is the handmaiden to the truck industry and has allowed Hawkesbury Highway to become a trucking cowboy corridor.

The Bells Line of Road is just a bad:

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Somewhere in the Blue Mountains there is a truck collision or rollover a week.  The trucking menace is out of control and these are the bureaucrats responsible – New South Wales Premier Barry O’Farrell and his Roads Minister Duncan Gay.

Premier Barry O’Farrell (left) and Roads Minister Duncan Gay

Handmaidens of Trucking

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Local residents and ordinary users of the Hawkesbury Road are intimidated by these trucking cowboys speeding, hogging the road and tailgating like their on a speedway circuit.

Blackheath, Blue Mountains, already a statistical victim

Betty Dowdell of Blackheath, 16 Dec 2008, rest in peace

Your memory is not lost.

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Drivers on the bends of Hawkesbury Road have raised concerns about the serious risks of heavy vehicles crossing to the wrong side of the road as they negotiate the narrow corners. The Roads and Maritime Service removed the centre lines on the bends late last year which residents say has only increased the problem.

Trucker Wet Dreaming

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With four schools on the 10km road, driver safety is paramount both on the Winmalee stretch and also for those people driving down from the Mountains via the bends.  According to local politicians, the solution would be for a proper review of the road by the RTA-come-RMS, with a view to enforcing the road rules, including a return to the centre lane markings on the bends and looking at other engineering options.

But many local residents have had enough and are demanding a complete ban trucks from driving on Hawkesbury Road which would mean it would no longer be gazetted as a State Route.

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Barry, unhitch from the greedy Trucking Lobby

Support the safety concerns of Residents

No Articulated Trucks on Hawkesbury Road

No Trucking Shortcuts!

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[Source:  ‘Hawkesbury Road residents driven round the bend’, 20130424, by Damien Madigan, editor, The Blue Mountains Gazette, ^http://www.bluemountainsgazette.com.au/story/1454002/hawkesbury-road-residents-driven-round-the-bend/]

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Kredies Trucking speeding down Victoria Pass, 5th December 2011

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<<A truck driver has been airlifted to hospital with suspected spinal injuries, and a major cleanup operation has been undertaken following a truck overturning on Mount Victoria Pass this afternoon (5 December 2011).

Emergency Services were called to the bottom of Mount Victoria Pass (Great Western Highway) just after 2:30pm today following reports an eastbound semi-trailer carrying scrap metal had rolled onto the concrete divider, leaving the driver trapped in the cabin.

Several Fire and Rescue NSW crews, Police Rescue, an Ambulance and a rescue helicopter responded to the scene. Rescue crews freed the driver about 4:45pm before he was airlifted to hospital suffering suspected spinal injuries.

The Great Western Highway has been closed for several hours while a clean up and salvage operation is underway with debris scattered across the roadway. The RTA has advised traffic is being diverted into the Darling Causeway with eastbound motorists being advised to use Chifley Road (Mort St) and the Darling Causeway as an alternative route.>>

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[Source:  ‘Truck Overturns at Mount Victoria’, 20111205, by NSW Incident Alerts, ^http://news.nswincidents.com/2011/12/05/traffic/persons-trapped/truck-overturns-mount-victoria/]

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Speeding Truck Overturns down Mt Victoria Pass, 3rd August 2011

Two truckers dead

The pass has been there and steep for a long time – nothing new.

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<<Two men have been crushed to death inside the cabin of a truck in the Blue Mountains today.   Police said the truck rolled and crashed into a barrier on the Great Western Highway, near the top of Victoria Pass, just after 10am.  The two men were found dead inside the cabin.   Their ages are unknown.   One eastbound lane of the highway is expected to be closed for some time while police investigate.>>

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[Source:  ‘Two killed in Blue Mountains truck crash’, 20110803, by Georgina Robinson, Sydney Morning Herald, ^http://www.smh.com.au/nsw/two-killed-in-blue-mountains-truck-crash-20110803-1iaqu.html]

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  It’s like the approach to Bagdad after Allied Forces’ Battle of Bagdad in 2003

[Source:  ‘F3 accident outpost clears way for network of depots’, 20111027, Sydney Morning Herald,

^http://smh.drive.com.au/roads-and-traffic/f3-accident-outpost-clears-way-for-network-of-depots-20111026-1mk7i.html]

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Footnote

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Again, we didn’t have to wait long to learn about yet another dangerous trucking cowboy in New South Wales.

In Sydney’s outer north this morning, a truck side-swiped a school bus and didn’t stop.

The small school bus was travelling along Bay Road at 9 am at Berrilee, when the bus driver was forced to swerve to avoid a head-on collision with the truck over the centre lines.

In avoiding the collision, the bus driver scraped along a rockface alongside the left hand side of the narrow section of Bay Road.   Four bus windows were smashed, and seven children on the bus suffered minor cuts from the smashed glass.  Two of them were taken to hospital.  The truck driver drove on (another hit and run) following the incident and yet police decided not to contemplate pursuing criminal charges.

Unbelievably the police are sight unseen self-excusing the trucker for ‘perhaps’ not realising the damage, because of some fabricated personal presumption that the truck was too big for the driver to notice.   “We don’t think he even realised something had gone wrong” the police spokesman said.

Was this comment correctly reported by the media?   If so, how does the police spokesman know?  Does it take a child to die for these police to treat seriously the near fatality of children on a supposedly safe school bus?

If so, these police should state this presumption to the faces of the children’s parents and see what response they get for excusing dangerous trucking behaviour endangering the lives of their children.

If so, then these police are ignorant of what could have happened, of the likely trauma experienced by both bus driver and the children who will never forget this incident that could have ended their lives.  These police seem to nonchalantly care nothing for road safety or for proactive policing.

‘She’ll be right reckless trucking‘  is unacceptable and here we record yet another trucking cowboy excused by police, until next time when an innocent road user is killed.

Not good enough!

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[Sources:  ‘Children injured in school bus crash at Berrilee in Sydney’, 20130529,  ABC News, ^http://www.abc.net.au/news/2013-05-29/three-children-injured-in-school-bus-crash/4719814?&section=news; and   ‘Sydney school bus crash injures children, 20130529, by AAP, ^http://www.news.com.au/breaking-news/national/children-hurt-in-sydney-bus-crash/story-e6frfku9-1226652814870]

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2005:  Another B-Double truck slammed into the rear of a school bus while speeding in fog at 8:30 am (school transit time) in country Victoria. About 20 primary school children were lucky not be killed as the back of a school bus was ripped off in the collision near Ballarat.

[Source:  Photo by Craig Sillitoe, in article: ‘Bus crash students lucky to be alive’, 20050513, by Adam Morton, The Age, Victoria,

^http://www.theage.com.au/news/National/Bus-crash-students-lucky-to-be-alive/2005/05/13/1115843345721.html]

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Noisy by day, nightmarish by night: Mt Victoria residents (Blue Mountains)

near this 24-hour Caltex service station are being disturbed round-the-clock

by truck drivers parking on their doorstops.

[Source: Blue Mountains Gazette, 20040924]

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As alternating Labor and Liberal governments ignore rail investment across Australia and instead encourage and invest hundreds of million of our taxes in bigger roads for truck freight, regional highways are being transformed into noisy and dangerous trucking expressways.

Year on year, the regional Great Western Highway over the Blue Mountains for instance, has seen a steady increase in the number, size and frequency of trucks using it for long-distance linehaul.  Produce, fuel, sand, soil, cement, grain, steel, concrete pipes, shipping containers are getting carted by road, some from as far away as Darwin and Perth, over the highway that runs through Blue Mountains towns and villages.  There are many different speed zones to ensure the safety of local road users.  All of these freight types could be carted by rail, which for the most part runs alongside the highway, but is mostly only used by passenger trains.    The only commodity still banned is uranium but with federal Labor recently allowing uranium sales to India to resume, is it only matter of time before radioactive uranium is carted through Blue Mountains towns and villages?

There are commuters, school zones, buses, cyclists, pedestrian crossings and increasingly 19 metre B-double trucks hurtling along the same highway driven by ‘trip-rate’ pay incentives.  Tail-gating is an all too frequently noted dangerous habit of many of these truck drivers, yet the NRMA suggests that “you try not to let the size of the vehicle intimidate you“. (Karen Fittall, NRMA’s ‘Open Road’ magazine, September/October 2005, ^http://www.mynrma.com.au/cps/rde/xchg/mynrma/hs.xsl/heavy_going.htm).

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Trucks behaving badly Pacific Highway (and Great Western Highway)

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Somehow the Transport Workers Union has allowed the hourly rate to go out the window in favour of the employer’s convenient fixed cost ‘trip rate’.  So to a truck driver it’s more trips for more money based on commercial incentive arrangements.  This incentive structure has become the motivation driving faster trucks and therefore more dangerous trucks to push and exceed speed limits.  Across the Blue Mountains, both Great Western Highway and Bell Line of Road, highway signposted speed limits are systemically unenforced.

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Where’s the speed governor?  Where are the road patrols?

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At the time of Bob Debus MP as NSW Labor Member for Blue Mountains (1981 – 1988, then again 1995 – 2007), then federal Labor member for Macquarie (2007 – 2009), the once prohibited B-double trucks surreptitiously started using the Great Western Highway.  How was this allowed?  Now 19 metre B-doubles are at such frequency along the highway as to be standard, but there has been no local community consultation nor local community approval.  It has been an undemocratic impost.  What is stopping 26 metre B-doubles creeping in?

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Exhaust Brake Noise is Rife!

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Many trucks drivers on the highway apply their noisy engine brakes (engine compression braking) because they are told it saves on the cost of brake pads.  Engine brakes in heavy vehicles are auxiliary brakes installed as important backup safety braking to reduce the load on service brakes on a steep descent.  But many truck drivers have then engaged automatically so they kick in as soon as the driver takes his foot of the accelerator pedal.  (This Editor holds a Class ‘HC’ Heavy Vehicle Drivers Licence, so is aware of this lazy habit).

Many truck engine brakes are noisy and the ‘bark’ characteristic of the noise reverberates considerably at night.   Truck drivers selfishly use these even as they drive through Blue Mountains towns and villages.  So 24 hours a day, often in the wee small hours, these exhaust brakes can be heard reverberating for miles around, keeping many Blue Mountains residents awake.

The police do nothing – they say it’s not their job.   The Roads and Traffic Authority (RTA) does nothing, except put up tokenistic signs – ‘Trucks – limit engine braking‘, which is flatly ignored and not enforced.    The Blue Mountains Council does nothing – it say it’s not it’s job, even though it accepts operating as an agency for the RTA at Katoomba.

Possibly the most ignored sign on a highway

One sign means the RTA can avoid the cost of enforcement

while pretending to and meet its local government development guidelines

– on paper.

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So truck owners apparently save on the cost of renewing their brakes, but selfishly at the expense of Blue Mountains residents trying to get a good night’s sleep. This editor lives a kilometre from the highway yet almost nightly hears some lousy trucker’s exhaust brakes as it moans up to the red lights outside Council chambers.  Selfish bastards they are!  I bet there’s been complaints, but typically none of these agencies has done squat about it.

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Dodgy Truck Rest Area

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Big linehaul trucks are destroying the Blue Mountains. Not only by their noise and dangerous speeds, but intimidating tail-gating to keep schedule and parking day and night outside residents homes.

At Mount Victoria in the Blue Mountains, the RTA and Blue Mountains Council approved of  24-hour Caltex Service Station and allowing truck drivers to use the adjacent highway shoulder to park and sleep.   The shoulder was even widened to accommodate and encourage its use as a dodgy heavy vehicle rest area.

Since December 2003, Caltex at Mount Victoria was somehow allowed to become a round-the-clock operation with drivers of passing trucks, semi-trailers and B-doubles using the road shoulders to park their vehicles, often directly in front of residents’ front doors.

Local residents have complained to their members of parliament about the constant truck noise, of truck drivers leaving their rubbish by the side of the road and some even using front yards as a toilet – urinating and defecating!

In 2004, Liberal MP Duncan Gay, then Shadow Roads Minister, met with local community representatives at Mount Victoria, confirming that:

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“The RTA, who are responsible for fatigue management need to provide proper rest points”

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Now in 2011, with the Liberal Coalition in power, still nothing has been done. With speed being the main cause of at least half the recorded crashes, and the NRMA confirming a need for increased enforcement of heavy vehicle speed limits, Duncan Gay back in 2004 also advocated the installation of two new speed cameras ‘to convince motorists to take more care.’  Nup, not yet done either!

Then NSW Liberal Party Shadow Minster Duncan Gay (centre)

meeting Blue Mountains community representatives at Mount Victoria in 2004.

All care and no responsibility. 

(Source:  Blue Mountains Gazette)

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The RTA, while headlong enthusiastic about channelling hundreds of millions into capital works widening sections of the highway, highway maintenance and traffic enforcement has always been the RTA’s unsexy Cinderella. Fatigue is one of the biggest causes of crashes for heavy vehicle drivers and the RTA is the delegated authority responsible for overseeing heavy vehicle driver fatigue management on New South Wales roads.  This necessarily includes providing for the necessary rest facilities.

Suitable rest areas are important for heavy vehicle drivers to take long and short rest breaks, use amenities and check loads and vehicles. Heavy vehicle drivers must conform to fatigue management legislation that specifies strict resting requirements. In order to fulfil these requirements they require suitable rest area facilities that are regularly spaced along key freight routes.  (Source:  ^http://www.rta.nsw.gov.au/heavyvehicles/safety/hvfatigue/index.html)

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RTA reneging on its duty to provide suitable Rest Areas

On 29th September 2008, Australia’s National Transport Commission (NTC) introduced new Heavy Vehicle Driver Fatigue laws national-wide.  This came about as a consequence of many crashes involving heavy vehicles on designated national freight routes and fatigue identified as a key cause.  The Audit of Rest Areas against National Guidelines (Austroads 2006) had found that many rest areas on freight routes across Australia (many in NSW) were deficient in being suitable to provide for appropriate rest breaks to address driver fatigue.  One of the key freight routes is Great Western Highway /Mitchell Highway (Nepean River to Dubbo).

The NTC Guidelines for Major Heavy Vehicle Rest Areas includes the following principles:

• Sites generally at no more than 100km intervals. Geographical and other physical constraints may require a range between 80 and 120km with the maximum limit generally being 120km.
• Sites are to be provided on both sides of the road on those parts of the network that have high levels of demand, while those with lower levels of demand will not require provision on both sides of the road.
• Sites are to be well signposted for heavy vehicle drivers and have suitable access for ingress and egress.
• Sites are to have designated hard stand parking for heavy vehicles and an appropriate number of parking spaces dependent on demand.
• Sites are to meet the basic needs of heavy vehicle drivers including provision of sealed pavements particularly for ingress and egress lanes/ramps, at least one toilet on each site, shade, shelter, rubbish bins and tables and chairs.

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[Read More:  ^http://www.ntc.gov.au/, access section under ‘Safety & Compliance’ tab]

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The RTA restated these two years later in its public document ‘RTA Strategy for Major Heavy Vehicle Rest Areas on Key Rural Freight Routes in NSW, January 2010‘.

 A RTA model heavy vehicle rest area

‘Station creek’ rest area north of Karuah, Pacific Highway, NSW

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A RTA dodgy heavy vehicle rest area

‘Mount Victoria’ outside resident properties #45-47, #49, #51, #143, #147, #151.

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RTA dodgy (unconscionable) heavy vehicle rest area in front of residents’ homes

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The RTA is obligated to provide for a Major Heavy Vehicle Rest Areas along the Great Western Highway accessible from each side of the highway at the intervals and with minimum standard of facilities as prescribed under the 2008 NTC Guidelines.  Similarly, heavy vehicle drivers are required to have breaks at the frequencies, duration and under such conditions as prescribed under the 2008 Heavy Vehicle Driver Fatigue laws, basically to ensure that they ‘fit for duty’ and not too tired to drive safely.  In NSW this is law under the Road Transport (General) Regulation 2005, which in relation to trucks applies to trucks with a Gross Vehicle Mass of 12 tonnes. Under the regulation, Basic Fatigue Management, starts with a solo driver required to have a 15 minute ‘stationary rest‘ after no more than 6 hours and 15 minutes at work, driving or otherwise.  Longer work shifts have increasing rest break requirements.  ‘Stationary rest‘ is defined as rest time that the driver spends out of the heavy vehicle or in an approved sleeper berth of a stationary regulated heavy vehicle.

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However, along the Great Western Highway, which the RTA deems to be a ‘key rural freight route‘, the entire route of 200 km between outer Sydney (Penrith) and Orange provides no current rest area facilities, either westbound or eastbound that meet the 2008 NTC Guidelines.   There should be two sites at no more than 100km apart, and on both sides of the highway, not just one side, with suitable access for ingress and egress.  The sites should have stand parking for heavy vehicles and an appropriate number of parking spaces dependent on demand, as well as offering drivers a toilet, shade, shelter, rubbish bins and tables and chairs.

But the RTA simply doesn’t care.  The RTA is prepared to ignore the problem of fatigue, to configure exemptions to avoid legalities and otherwise spend millions on the more politically sexy capital works upgrades.  Three years after the NTC Guidelines, and many crashes later (involving heavy vehicles), the RTA has spent hundred of millions widening the Great Western Highway into a trucking expressway for bigger and more trucks to use, but has provided no facilities to address heavy vehicle driver fatigue.   So the RTA is telling truck drivers to take proper breaks, but providing them with stuff all places to properly have a break.  The RTA is negligent. It is also sly at claiming private enterprise facilities as its delivery of rest areas.

So the RTA is not just negligent. It is unethical.

 

No heavy vehicle facilities provide by the RTA for 200 km between Penrith and Orange

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Along the Great Western Highway freight route between Penrith and Orange, a distance of over 200 km, the RTA provides no dedicated rest areas for heavy vehicles to the NTC Guidelines.  The only RTA-built rest area is an unshaded paved vehicle check area just west of Faulconbridge with no facilities except two rubbish bins.

Only private enterprises are providing any form of adequate rest facility eastbound between Orange and Penrith that is accessible by heavy vehicles – the BP Service Station at Mount Lambie and  the Caltex Service Station at Mount Victoria, but neither provide space for a heavy vehicle to park so the driver can sleep.   The only heavy vehicle rest facility between westbound between Penrith and Orange is the Shell Service Station at Yetholm where there is ample off road parking, a roadside restaurant, toilets and an adjoining motor inn, but this is a commercial operation, not one provided by the RTA.

The RTA is thus contributory in culpability for heavy vehicle crashes due to driver fatigue along the Great Western Highway.

The RTA map below (which can be viewed full size by the link provided) shows the Great Western Highway from Penrith to Bathurst, with only two rest stops (‘Driver Reviver‘ sites in yellow) – one at Glenbrook (westbound only), and one at Faulconbridge (eastbound only).  Neither are any more than roadside parking areas without facilities – big of the RTA!

(View full size map with legend, click here)

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RTA’s key rural freight route supposed ‘rest area’

for Heavy Vehicles at Faulconbridge – westbound access only.

(Photo by Editor 20111019, free in public domain)

• No toilets
• No shade
• No shelter
• No tables
• Two bins, but who empties them and how often?
• Not signposted as ‘Rest Area’ but as ‘Vehicle Checking Area’  I wonder why?      (see next zoom photo)

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RTA key rural freight route truck stop Faulconbridge

Not signposted as ‘Rest Area‘ but as ‘Vehicle Checking Area‘

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Back to the January 2010 ‘RTA Strategy for Major Heavy Vehicle Rest Areas on Key Rural Freight Routes in NSW’, the RTA lists the facilities available or not available for heavy vehicle drivers along the Great Western Highway between Penrith and Orange in two tables – one Westbound (p.19), one Eastbound (p.20).

Read ‘RTA Strategy for Major Heavy Vehicle Rest Areas on Key Rural Freight Routes in NSW, January 2010‘.

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Westbound (south side of highway)

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(Click to enlarge table)

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RTA Official Excuse:

‘Victoria Pass Parking Area‘ is nothing but a widened road shoulder outside the Caltex Service Station at Mount Victoria outside residents homes.  There is no shade or shelter.  The Caltex Service Station provides for refuelling/vehicle inspection, but no place for drivers to sleep in the vehicles.

At the time of writing, there are no current facilities at River Lett Hill – the statement of there being ‘a rest area…on both sides of the road including a toilet‘ is false and misleading.

At the time of writing, the Raglan Service Centre (Shell) is currently closed and is under construction as a BP service station.  It is to be a private facility, not provided by the RTA.

RTA:  “No existing rest area meets or can be upgraded to meet the required 10 parking spaces in one site in this section (due to existing site constraints). The recommendation is for heavy vehicles to utilise and upgrade existing rest areas, in the interim, with the RTA investigating the potential, to construct in the long term, a major rest area as part of the Great Western Highway upgrade – Mount Victoria to Lithgow project.”

Ed: Given this will cost about $1 billion, it is unlikely to be funded or built any time soon, and so is a poor excuse by the RTA for doing nothing.

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Eastbound (north side of the highway)

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(Click to enlarge table)

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There is no heavy vehicle facility between Orange and Bathurst.  The RTA’s  mention of upgrading the Larra Lee rest area is a proposal only, just to fill in space in the table to mask its failure to provide a facility.

 

‘Raglan Service Centre’

At the time of writing the ‘Raglan Service Centre is closed.  It was a Shell Service Station for heavy vehicles.  It is currently under construction as a BP Service Station, but it is not a facilty provided by the RTA.  The RTA’s branding of this facility as a ‘Raglan Service Centre’ is deceptive and misleading.

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Caltex Service Station at Mount Victoria

The only facility that the RTA mentions is “Parking bay east of Mount Victoria (existing). Food, toilet, shade, shelter provided at adjacent service station“.

This false and misleading.  The facilities are not that of the RTA.  The only service offered by the Caltex Service Station for heavy vehicles is refueling, vehicle inspection, a roadside cafe and toilet.  There is no shade or shelter either on the Caltex site or along the road shoulders.   The “parking bay” is the road shoulder.  What a deceptive fabrication!

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RTA’s excuse for perpetuating its Dodgy Rest Area at Mount Victoria

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Standard Politic Tactic #1:    Blame lack of Federal Government – will sit well with NSW Roads and Transport Minister of the day

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RTA:

‘Implementation of the RTA’s Strategy for Major Heavy Vehicle Rest Areas on Key Rural Freight Routes in NSW is largely dependent on the availability of funding from the Federal Government.

The Federal Government’s 2008/09 Budget outlined that the Department of Infrastructure, Transport, Regional Development and Local Government would provide $70 million across Australia over four years to fund a range of heavy vehicle safety initiatives.  This funding is being allocated under the Heavy Vehicle Safety and Productivity Program (HVSPP) in two rounds with Round 1 covering 2008/09 – 2009/10 (complete) and Round 2 covering 2010/11 and 2011/12 (current). Under the HVSPP Guidelines a key consideration in allocating the funding is the extent to which state and territory governments commit to match the Federal Government’s funding contribution.

As part of Round 1 of the HVSPP, on 8 May 2009 the Federal Minister for Infrastructure, Transport, Regional Development and Local Government and the then State Minister for Roads announced $16M (50% Federal and 50% State) for NSW.   Of this, $15M is currently being spent on 6 new rest areas and 22 rest area upgrades with the balance on bridge assessments for higher masses. In Round 1, NSW received 26.6% of $30 million available.

In applying the principles set in the RTA’s Guidelines for Provision of Major Heavy Vehicle Rest Areas a summary of needs across key rural freight routes in NSW is outlined in Table 2.  Currently, on these routes 101 rest areas qualify as major heavy vehicle rest areas and 76 sites have been identified for enhancement. A total of 61 existing rest areas have been identified for upgrade to qualify as a major heavy vehicle rest area and 15 sites identified for new heavy vehicle rest areas. The strategic cost ($2009) to undertake required works that are not anticipated to be delivered as part of a major infrastructure proposal is estimated at around $50 to 60 million.

Delivery of works at all 76 identified sites is significantly higher than  this strategic estimate.’

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So what is the RTA’s ultimate excuse:

‘The RTA investigating the potential, in the long term, for a major rest area as part of the Great Western Highway upgrade – Mount Victoria to Lithgow.‘

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(Ed:  Given the $1 billion pre-blowout estimate, the RTA can focus on its more sexy capital works highway upgrades)..

Meanwhile, back at sleepless Mount Victoria, the Blue Mountains Council was told that the real estate profession had refused to place a valuation on the homes because of the problem and that the homes had been ‘effectively rendered worthless‘.

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[Source: ‘Mt Vic’s truck dilemma’, by Len Ashworth, Lithgow Mercury, Tuesday 20081125]

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