The Dangerous Trucking Menace is becoming increasingly prevalent across the Blue Mountains on both the Great Western Highway and the Bells Line of Road.
This is because the ‘Roads and Traffic Authority‘ – rebranded but culturally unchanged to the ‘Transport Roads and Maritime Services‘ is tasked to re-engineer the Great Western Highway, a regional and local road, to facilitate more trucks.
The trucking mandate is to transform the highway into an expressway designed for bigger and faster trucks, just like the F3 Motorway between outer Sydney and the regional city of Newcastle, as infamously deadly that the F3 is.
The trucking mandate is national and driven by an Australia-wide freight transport policy which prioritises 95% road and 5% rail. The truck-centric policy is steered by self-interested influential trucking magnates and their industry, whose driving catch-phrase is ‘time is money‘ and so any community along the highway that slows their trucks down must be dealt with. They fund political economic rationalism which prefers to outsource and privatise instead of responsibly investing in national rail freight infrastructure.
Highway communities are treated as second class citizens. Residents like the many thousands across the Blue Mountains are increasing exposed to the Dangerous Trucking Menace, when sharing the highway and from their homes:
Bigger trucks and more B-Doubles
Speeding trucks
Tailgating trucks
Trucks over the centre double lines
Truck drivers frequently seen talking on a mobile phone while driving
Exhaust brakes used at all hours through towns and villages
Collisions and deaths
Overturned trucks
Broken down trucks
Trucks on fire
Truck tankers with gas, fuel or hazardous chemical leaks
Selfish truckies sleeping outside residents at all hours with refrigerator motors running at Mt Victoria
Same selfish truckies found urinating and defecating in residents’ front verges at Mt Victoria.
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[Ed: And truckies and their supporting wives wonder why truckies have a bad reputation and often cop blame? Trucking is not a profession. It is a uncontrolled cowboy skill-easy job earning pittance, attracting imbeciles and causing reckless maiming and death. This Editor has continued to hold an ‘HC’ licence from 1989, but income-wise has long since moved on.]
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Source: Blackheath Highway Action Group
‘The Blackheath Highway Action group was formed in 2008 to fight a proposal to turn the Great Western Highway
into a 4 lane high productivity freight vehicle (25/26/30m B-doubles) route across the Blue Mountains.
Website: ^http://www.bag.asn.au
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Hardly a week passes without some report of a truck-related incident along the Great Western Highway and especially along the Hume Freeway, F3 Motorway and Pacific Highway, and that is just in New South Wales. One local resident of the Blue Mountains, a Marcus Padley, terms these ‘Mack Truck Moments‘. If only it were funny. Last month Sarina Heta in her Kia Rio sedan wasn’t laughing when she was violently crushed between two B-doubles on the Great Western highway at Blackheath.
Australia has no central register of truck incidents, but if it did one wagers that the occurrence would be a daily one. This is unacceptable yet the trucking menace is encouraged and poorly controlled or policed.
Currently, the Great Western Highway is being widened to four lanes at Hazelbrook at great expense and considerable delay due to poor due diligence and mismanagement. In the re-engineered design, all interests of trucks are priorities by the road engineers, while local residents have little or no say. As each stage of widening transformation takes place, successive affected communities become disheartened and confronted by the bulldozing of the regional highway and its replacement with a much wider trucking expressway.
Lawson has been completely obliterated and its character ‘lobotomised‘ as a town.
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Lawson before the Trucking Expressway bulldozers
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Neo-LawsonShops bulldozedVillage Character urban lobotomised
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Soon it will be neighbouring Bullaburra’s turn and highway properties are already up for sale.
Bullaburra: On Trucking Death Row
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The Bells Line of Road across the Blue Mountains is also having its side shoulders widened to accommodate B-double trucks 24/7 and is involving the destruction of native vegetation for kilometres. Stage 1 is around the agricultural village of Bilpin.
Many sand and gravel B-Double style trucks use the Bells Line of Road between quarries and Sydney. They are paid a trip rate and so travel at excessive speed to maximise trips per day. The road has no speed cameras and is rarely patrolled by police. It has become an infamous trucking cowboy route. In June 2012, a sand loaded semi-trailer collided with two cars near Mt Tomah. The truck was probably over the centre double lines like they usually are.
In May 2011, a gravel truck overturned on the Bells Line of Road while exceeding the speed limit. The road is a renowned trucking menace and car drivers and motorbike riders use it at their own risk. In July 2009, a motorcyclist has been killed on the Bells Line of Road 10 kilometres west of the Mount Tomah. It must have surely been a ‘Mack Truck Moment‘.
The government’s Trucking Expressway Mandate is to keep widening the Great Western Highway out to mainly four lanes between outer Sydney where the 6-lane M4 Motorway currently links to, and all the way out to Orange and beyond. The long-term trucking strategy to eventually encourage 24/7 trucking of B-doubles between Sydney and Perth and Darwin. In western Victoria even B-triples have been introduced, which are basically Road Trains – give the trucking lobby time.
B-doubles have to date been prohibited from the Great Western Highway due to its narrow unsuitable design and to respect the fact that it passes through nearly two dozen regional town and villages. But that is constantly being challenged and undermined by hard-nosed government policy.
The dangerous misguided premise by the policy and by road engineers is that a wider a faster trucking expressway will be safer than the existing highway, yet the evidence refutes that. All one needs to do is consider the repeated statistical record of trucks incidents along the already widened sections of the Great Western highway, and indeed along the RTA/RMS’s favourite creation, its F3 Motorway.
The following recent reports of trucking incidents are testament to the trucking menace that trucking expressways attract.
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2nd March 2013: ‘Overturned Truck Closes F3 at Mount White’
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<<Mount White: The F3 remains closed northbound approaching the Old Pacific Highway Overpass in Mount White due to a truck accident. Motorists are being diverted off the F3 onto the Old Pacific Highway at the Hawkesbury Interchange in Mooney Mooney. Emergency services and RMS crews are on site, working to clear the accident as quickly as possible…>
<<All southbound and northbound lanes have reopened on the F3 near Motorway Link Road in Warnervale now that gas bottles are no longer leaking on the back of a truck. Gas cylinders began leaking on the back of a truck near Motorway Link Road about 6.45pm, forcing the closure of southbound lanes and one northbound lane.>>
<<There was a lucky escape for a truck driver on the Central Coast yesterday. Just after 11am, a Rutherford-bound semi trailer full of clay caught fire, forcing the closure of northbound lanes of the F3 Freeway at Mount White. The driver, from Victoria, had pulled the rig over after seeing smoke billowing from the engine. He escaped unharmed but the same couldn’t be said for the prime mover.>>
7 Feb 2013: ‘Hume Highway traffic affected after truck roll over’
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<<Both northbound lanes of the Hume Highway were closed south of Tarcutta following the accident but one northbound lane was since been re-opened. The accident about 15km south of Tarcutta occurred shortly after 9am this morning. Emergency services are in attendance and a HAZMAT team has been sent following reports of diesel over the road. Motorists are advised to drive with caution if in the area and to allow for extra time on their journey.>>
Nov 2012: ‘Traffic slow at Ourimbah following truck rollover’
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<<Traffic is slowing on the F3 Freeway near Ourimbah on the Central Coast where a semi-trailer rolled onto its side about 9.30am. It is understood the driver was trapped for a short time but has since been freed and police are on-site managing the clean up and traffic control.>>
Mar 2012: ‘Police target second trucking firm over safety’
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<<New South Wales police are targeting another truck company over suspected serious safety breaches. Trucks from the South Australian-based Scott’s transport are being stopped at several heavy vehicle checking stations, including the F3 freeway at Mount White and the Hume Highway at Marulan. Officials from Roads and Maritime Services are also involved in the operation.
Police say one of the company’s B-double trucks was caught driving on the Hume Highway at Mittagong at 142 kilometres per hour early on Monday morning. Officers are searching for 32 Scott’s trucks out of the company’s fleet of more than 300, and say that number may rise. They say the trucks will then undergo a comprehensive mechanical inspection. The investigation follows an operation against Sydney-based Lennons Transport Services, where police say speed limiting devices in numerous trucks had been tampered with.
A Lennons driver is before the courts charged over a crash that killed three people on the Hume Highway at Menangle in January.>>
Jul 2011: ‘Delays on freeway after truck rollover’
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<<NSW motorists on the F3 freeway are being warned to expect significant delays after a B-double truck rolled over at Cooranbong southwest of Newcastle. The truck, which was carrying milk, rolled onto its side and skidded for several metres at the Freemans Drive overpass before being hit by a ute.
The truck driver was taken to hospital but the woman driving the ute escaped injury. A salvage operation is underway but it is expected the freeway will be blocked for several hours. Southbound traffic is being diverted at Palmers Drive to re-enter at Freemans Drive southbound on-ramp.>>
Lost load … the scene at Chullora where a refrigerated pantech fell from a truck
[Source: Picture: Bill Hearne, The Daily Telegraph]
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<<It was a year of carnage for the state’s truck drivers, with the number of fatal accidents increasing by more than 90 per cent, government statistics reveal.
There were 23 fatal crashes involving heavy rigid trucks – non-articulated vehicles greater than eight tonnes – in 2009. This was up from 12 a year earlier, the Bureau of Infrastructure, Transport and Regional Economics (BITRE) said. The BITRE data also showed the number of people killed in accidents involving heavy rigid trucks in NSW was up 100 per cent to 24, when deaths in Australia decreased by 14.7 per cent.
The RTA dismissed claims that the increase in the road death statistics were a cause for concern. The RTA’s NSW Centre for Road Safety director Soames Job said the increase was the result of a reduction in deaths the year before. “The main number that produces the outcome is the low number of deaths the previous year. It was extraordinary that we had so few in 2008,” Dr Job said.
Fatal accidents involving articulated trucks fell from 47 in 2008 to 34 in 2009, BITRE said. The figures came as a truck driver had a lucky escape in Sydney’s west on Tuesday night.
The refrigerated section of a meat carrier sheared from the truck and rolled on to the Hume Highway flyover at Chullora. A crane was brought in to right the truck to clear the road.
Dr Job said in many crashes, the smaller vehicle might be at fault. “Lots of these accidents will involve speed and fatigue and that is what we are trying to address,” he said. “We have this large program of speed enforcement in areas where there is known heavy truck traffic and that is why we have said we’ll roll out 20 locations of point-to-point speed cameras across our highway network”..>>
Aug 2010: ‘B-double crashes on F3, shutting southbound lanes’
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<<Motorists using the F3 Freeway are being told to divert their travel or face significant traffic delays after a B-double carrying gas cylinders crashed today. The truck was carrying 1600 nine kilogram cylinders when it hit the eastern brick wall just before the Hawkesbury River Bridge about 9:15am.
No one was injured but the crash forced police to close two of the three southbound lanes. Northbound lanes remain open and all lanes are expected to be opened by 4pm. Southbound motorists are being urged to avoid the area by taking the Pacific Highway exit at Brooklyn,” a police statement says. “The gas cylinders are being removed by hand for safety reasons prior to the B-double being removed. Inquiries into the crash are continuing.>>
Jun 2010: ‘Driver dies after flipping truck on F3’
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<<A man has died in a truck accident on the F3 at Mount White on the New South Wales central coast yesterday. Police say the driver was turning into a heavy vehicle checking station when his trailer jackknifed at about 3:30pm. The truck then flipped onto the driver’s side before sliding into a power pole. The male driver, who has not been formally identified, was killed. A report will be prepared for the Coroner.>>
Apr 2010: ‘Highway smash raises response time questions’
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<<The New South Wales Roads Minister says the RTA did not act quickly enough to re-open the F3 Freeway after an accident south of Newcastle yesterday, which left motorists stranded for hours.
A flat-bed truck ran into the back of a fully loaded fuel tanker on the freeway around midday near Mount White, with the accident closing all northbound lanes.
The RTA set up a contraflow around the accident site, using southbound lanes for motorists heading north, and diverting southbound traffic along the old Pacific Highway.
Questions are being asked why it took so long to set up the contraflow, which was not in place until at least eight hours after the crash.
Hazmat crews worked to remove fuel from the tanker, with the Fire Brigade declaring the area safe sometime around midnight.
The Roads and Transport Minister David Campbell says he will be meeting with the RTA today to discuss the delay in re-opening the road.>>
<<A truck driver has been left with serious head injuries after an accident on the New South Wales central coast. Police say the accident happened on the F3 Freeway at Mount White at about 11:40am (AEST). It is believed a flat-bed vegetable truck ran into the back of a fully laden petrol tanker…>>
Sep 2009: ‘Delays on Sydney’s F3 after another fatality’
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<<Traffic is being delayed on the F3 freeway as police investigate a death near the Mooney Mooney Bridge, south of Gosford. Police say a man fell onto the road and died just after 1pm AEST. All northbound lanes have been closed while investigations are carried out…>>
Aug 2009: ‘Young parents and baby die in F3 inferno’
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The wreckage on the F3 after the fatal crashA couple and baby killed
[Photo: Matt Black Productions]
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<<A young Gosford couple and their baby were killed when their car burst into flames in a crash involving a B-double truck and another car on the F3 freeway on the NSW Central Coast yesterday night.
Police said two cars stopped on the freeway before a truck struck both vehicles from behind, killing a 27-year-old woman, a 32-year-old man and a five-month-old baby at 10.50pm. The impact caused one of the cars and the truck to catch fire. There was also another triple fatality in central-northern NSW about 10.30am today on Newell Highway near Narrabri.
Police said the bodies of the young family were found in the charred car on the 110 km/h marked stretch of road near the Mount White weigh-bridge. Two other people were taken to Gosford Hospital with various injuries.
Metropolitan crash investigator Sergeant Peter Jenkins said the family’s car was completely “incinerated”. “For some reason the two vehicles have become stationary in lane one, northbound, they’re not in the breakdown lane, they’re actually still in the traffic lane,” he told Macquarie Radio today.
“The young family’s car is the southern vehicle, another northbound car has braked and stopped and swerved to miss it and entered into the breakdown lane.
“Since that’s happened the truck driver’s been exposed to these two vehicles and he’s done what he can, but he hasn’t been able to avoid these two vehicles.” He said the truck driver was suffering from shock and had been discharged from hospital after speaking to police.
Towers Transport general manager John Perkins said the truck driver was very upset. “He has no apparent physical injuries … he’s extremely distraught,” Mr Perkins said.
He would not comment on the circumstances surrounding the accident but said the company had never been involved in a fatal crash. “We’ve been in business for 20 years, we’ve got about 50 trucks, and this is the first time we’ve been faced with something like this,” Mr Perkins said.
The driver of the second car was taken to Gosford Hospital for treatment, but police have been unable to to speak to him. His condition is unknown. The family has been identified and some relatives have been notified of their deaths, he said.
Sergeant Jenkins played down claims the stretch of road was dangerous, saying he hadn’t been able to attribute a serious crash in the area to the design or condition of the road in the past 20 years.
“I think the F3 is actually quite a good stretch of road in most parts,” he said.
“Inquiries into the circumstances leading up to the crash are continuing,” a police spokesman said.
‘Expect long delays’
Northbound lanes on the F3 freeway out of Sydney have reopened to traffic but motorists are warned to expect long delays.
All northbound lanes were closed while police removed the bodies and wreckage and carried out an investigation until about 11.20am today.
Despite reopening the lanes, traffic is still banked up for almost 10 kilometres between Mount White and the Hawkesbury River, the Road and Traffic Authority says.
“All lanes are open on the F3, but traffic will take a while to clear, an RTA spokesman told AAP.
“Traffic is still heavy with significant delays and people who have been diverted on to the Pacific Highway will also experience significant delays.”
It is the second major crash in two days on the F3 in that area. Four people escaped serious injury in a six-vehicle crash caused when a piece of scaffolding fell off a semitrailer at Mooney Mooney yesterday.
Police are appealing for anyone who might have seen the crash and are yet to speak to crash investigators to contact them via Crime Stoppers on 1800 333 000.>>
<<Car drivers have had lots of restrictions placed on them over the years in an attempt to reduce the road toll including school zones due to a slight increase in accidents. A 100% increase in heavy truck deaths is not acceptable. Reduce their speeds to 60kph and reduce fatigue by reducing driving time to 6 hours per day and accidents due to speed or fatigue will drop. Imagine what would happen if car deaths increased 100%. Would we see changes, you can bet on it.>>
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Rod Pickin:
<<Until the maximum road speed for heavy vehicles is limited to 80kph, you can expect a continued increase in accidents/deaths involving these vehicles. Currently heavy vehicles are being driven dangerously and at high speed as a result of work/deadline pressures imposed upon drivers by owners/operators and major supermarket customers all sanctioned by govt. bodies.
Truly how rediculous is it that a fully loaded B-Double even road train fuel/gas tanker is legally allowed on our highways in the wet to travel at 100kph? that is just inviting major drama so one is entitled to ask, who is putting presure on who in order that this be allowed.>
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Rob:
<<I’ve noticed the lack of ‘100 speed limited’ signs on most trucks these days as they go flying past me on the highways while I’m obeying the limit.>>
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Julian:
<<This is sad. The carnage on the F3 goes on, mostly involving semi-trailers. When I take my family on holidays, trucks tail-gate us at 120Kph, and scare the hell out of me.>>
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Young parents and toddler die in fiery crash:
<<The solution is simple. make speed limit for trucks 70kmh max and must not move out of left lane for whatever reason. the F3 is the most dangerous freeway I have ever driven on, doing 100-110 on blind hills and bends a truck has no way of stopping fast if it has to.>>
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David:
<<I drive the F3 every day and it is a miracle that more accidents such as these do no occur. In peak hour the average speed of vehicles is in excess of speed limit and cars do this with the knowledge that they are highly unlikely to be caught. When police do drive along the freeway they also average around 10 kph above the speed limit and cars just happily follow them at that speed.
In the road works area you have speed variances of between 80 kph (speed limit) and 120 kph with average of around 100 kph. To sit on the speed limit along that road is nearly more dangerous than speeding. This is a tragedy as are all road deaths and one can only hope that this does force the authorities into action so that something positive comes from it to get some sanity back into the way drivers behave on this road.>>
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mirage:
<<I’m sure its another example of a truck driver that was speeding – I travel every few weeks up and down the F3 in a normal sedan at 100-110km per hour and most trucks fly past me except when going up the hills…the Police are not doing enough and some truck drivers just think they can do what they want…same attitude problem as the ferry drivers on the harbour and bus drivers…they think the road is theirs and they are smarter than the rest, professional drivers…they should know that in the end the extra speed doesnt make much difference…>>
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More Trains, Less Trucks:
<<One partial solution would be to build a freight line so that we could send more goods by rail. Think about howmany trucks would be off the road for each extra train. I am sure that the truckies would complain about potential loss of jobs, but that wasn’t the case when the Ghan was extended from Alice Springs to Darwin.
Instead of losing jobs, the truckies found that they had more short haul jobs supplying the freight trains and less long haul jobs with all of the associated safety issues.>>
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Kate:
<<I used to drive the F3 regularly but now catch the train as it is too dangerous. If you look at the accident record over the past few years, you will see most involve trucks. The F3 is one of the few decent roads in the state, yet now ruined by huge speeding semis and other trucks that are a terrible hazard to cars. On top of that everyone speeds like the devil, with impunity it seems. All those massive tonnes of heavy goods in transit should be shipped by rail. The whole transport thing is getting completely out of hand.>>
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frederick:
<<I am often horrified at the increase in trucks on our roads and the frequent aggressive driving adopted by these drivers. Driving generally on our roads has become so bad that this sort of horror is going to keep happening. Anyone who drives at or near the speed limit would know. Unless of course our pollies have the guts to do something about it and the Police start to enforce some of the existing road rules. With three warning signs before every fixed speed camera we might as well adopt a new slogan for NSW – THE DUMB STATE!
How many more lives is it going to take before we come to our senses?>>
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Ian C. Purdie:
<<Yes, so trucks are speed limited to 100 kph, the sign on the back says so. That would be the reason they either tail gate you at 110 kph or overtake.>>
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waqi13:
<<I travel on F3 several times each week for work. At least once a week I have a close call with truck drivers not paying attention to what is going on around them. It seems that 90% of trucks have blinkers and side mirrors that don’t work – they change lanes at the drop of a hat with no indication, and in the worst case scenario to overtake another truck that they cannot go fasther than anyway – creating a long line of traffic, chugging up a hill at much less then the speed limit.
I have learnt to give trucks a wide berth, because they will do what they want to do without checking for any cars around them.>>
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Daniel:
<<It’s a dangerous road at night and drivers need to have full concentration on the freeway. they need to stick to the speed limit. Ive driven on it so many times and I do 110 and others are flying past me all the time. Trucks are going faster than the 100 they are supposed to be doing. Most of the time now I use the old Pacific Highway through to Gosford. its just too dangerous with all the rats on the road.>>
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JSKS:
<<It’s very sad indeed. In fact 110km/hr is a very fast speed for a fully loaded truck. It’s not easy for the truck to stop that easily when their loads are full. At 10.30pm, the truck light shining distance is at best 30 meters. I believed by the time the driver realised that there is a car in front, it’s too late to stop effectively. In other countries, while the Freeway limit is 110km/hr, the maximum speed limit for truck is only 90km/hr. Yes, this will delay delivery time but I think HUMAN LIFE is more important than delivery time.>
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SP233K:
<<I drive on the F3 every day, and seriously no one obeys speed limits,they tailgate,they speed like crazy,the have no regard for anyone else,trucks speed and change lanes cutting people off and don’t care at all. Every day i worry i will end up in an accident and as soon as it gets dark trucks drive about a thousand times worse,they would have no way of stopping quickly.
Police constantly pull over cars (in the event there are actually police patrolling which is not very often). I really think they should be pulling over trucks as well. I hope this is a warning to everyone to be more careful on the F3, surely there have been enough horrific accidents for everyone to see how dangerous it is.
My heart goes out to the families of the people involved in last night’s accident. I drove past this morning and it really was a horrible scene.>>
May 2009: ‘B-double involved in F3 collision with car’
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<<There has been yet another traffic accident on the F3 involving a B-double truck, overnight. About 10.40pm last night (Tuesday), the driver of the B-double truck, a 38-year-old man from Cundletown, allegedly changed lanes and ran straight into a car being driven by a 63-year-old man from Umina. Both vehicles were travelling north along the freeway at Wahroonga, near Alexandria Pde.
When the car was hit, it spun out of control, police said, and collided with the median guardrail. The driver of the car was trapped until emergency crews cut him from the wreckage.
He was taken to the Royal North Shore Hospital with suspected back injuries and remains in a serious but stable condition. Hornsby Police have told the Advocate they will wait on the results of blood test before taking any action. No charges have yet been laid.>>
Apr 2009: ‘F3 truck ‘cut off’ before cliff plunge’
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<<Police are searching for the driver of a white Kenworth truck seen close to a semitrailer that plunged 80 metres off the F3, north of Sydney yesterday. Emergency services workers have recovered the body of the 40-year-old driver. The driver is reported to have been married with a young child.
The semitrailer will be salvaged by crane from 8pm today, with northbound traffic to be diverted from the F3 at Wahroonga. The B-Double Linfox semitrailer was carrying toilet paper when it crashed through a safety barrier at the side of the freeway and fell into the valley near Hornsby about 11.35am yesterday.
Two northbound lanes of the F3 were closed and traffic was diverted after the crash. Police are investigating reports the Sydney man had swerved to miss another truck which had changed lanes in front of him, before his vehicle speared off the road. Police today appealed for the driver of the Kenworth truck to come forward.
“We are appealing for the driver of a white Kenworth that was close to the [semitrailer] at the time of the crash to contact police through the Crime Stoppers hotline and tell us what they know or what they might have seen at the time the truck went over the railing,” a NSW Police spokeswoman said.
Senior Sergeant Peter Jenkins of the Metropolitan Crash Investigation Unit said witnesses told police there were some trucks near the semitrailer before the crash happened.
“It would apply at this stage that they might not have contributed to the crash. They might be totally innocent people driving along. But we would like to interview them because they may know something about the reason why this gentleman has left the roadway,” he said. “So we are appealing to them as witnesses at this stage.”
Senior Sergeant Jenkins said it was raining quite heavily when the accident occurred and police would be investigating all the possible accident factors, including weather, road surface, traffic, mechancial issues and the driver’s schedule.
But Phil Easterbrook, who lives near where the accident happened and heard a bang, said the accident was not unexpected. “We always hear the sound of horns going off and of braking. They are [hooting] to avert an accident because people are cutting them off,” he said. “We hear banging quite regularly from vehicles from accidents happening.”
Mr Easterbrook, who used to drive a truck, said trucks would try to build up speed as they went up the hill, and so would not like other vehicles cutting them off.
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ROAD SURFACE HAZARD
Paul Gerrard, who uses the F3 daily to travel from Kellyville to his work in Tuggerah and back, said the road surface where the accident occurred had been a serious hazard for a few months.
“Approximately four to five months ago the original freeway road surface [bitumen] was removed by mechanical pavement machines in an overnight operation that went for several weeks,” he said. “In the absence of signs it appears the pavement was removed to enable the whole freeway to be resurfaced with bitumen after the widening project [of the freeway] is completed.
Mr Gerrard said the northbound lanes, which were resurfaced, now had a rough texture and were dangerous to drive on especially during heavy rain. “The road gets far too much water and there’s no control. My experience is that, during heavy rain, drivers must slow to approximately 70kmh or the car aquaplanes left. It is an expectation and not random.”
He said the rails along these lanes were dented from large impacts of vehicles hitting them.
An RTA spokesman said that, while it could not comment on the accident as it was the subject of a police investigation, concrete roads such as the ones on the F3 were not uncommon in NSW.
“The RTA regularly carries out tests on road surface across the state and this section of road was last tested in August and September of last year. These tests showed that the road surface provided adequate wet-weather grip,” the spokesman said. The RTA spokesman said it understood the accident took place “on a downhill section where surface water would not accumulate”, and advised motorists to slow down and adjust their driving when there was wet weather.
From 2003 to 2007, there were six crashes reported on the 1km northbound section of of the F3 just north of the Edgeworth David Avenue overpass at Wahroonga, the spokesman said.
None of the crashes involved heavy vehicles and there were no deaths, he said.
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CRANE FAILED TO MOVE SEMI-TRAILER
A crane was brought in to lift the semitrailer, but a 7?-hour operation from 4.30pm to midnight by emergency services failed to move it.
“The boom on it to go down to the truck was not long enough,” an RTA spokeswoman said. A larger 400-tonne crane would be brought in to lift the truck tonight, the spokeswoman said.
It was not yet decided which company would be supplying the crane, although it was likely Linfox would foot the bill, she said.
The RTA said the crane would take three to four hours to assemble, and the same time to disassemble. It said it would take four hours to move the truck. The RTA will close access to the F3 northbound from the Pacific Highway and Pennant Hills Road at Wahroonga during the salvage operation.
Traffic would rejoin the F3 at Berowa. Diversions were expected to be in place until 8am tomorrow, the RTA said. Southbound lanes would not be affected. Yesterday’s fears that the fuel spilt from the truck would cause environmental damage have also dissipated, NSW Fire Brigades spokesman Craig Brierley said.
The diesel from the truck spread over a large area and sank into the soil beneath the truck, but did not reach the water catchment area nearby, Mr Brierley said. The low amount of fuel in the tank and its cargo meant there were fewer fears about its impact on the environment, he said. “There was only 500 litres of diesel on the truck, which is not a lot, so that made the job a lot easier,” Mr Brierley said. Hazmat crews were at the site of the crash for most of yesterday night and would check the area again when the truck was removed, he said.
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[Ed: Was the RTA recklessly culpable for the driver’s death?]
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FUND ESTABLISHED TO HELP FAMILYT OF DEAD TRUCKIE
The young family of the driver will be the recipients of a fund established by transport union officials.
“The man who died yesterday had a young family and what happened can only be described as a tragedy,” Transport Workers’ Union NSW secretary Wayne Forno said today. “The TWU is calling on all members to donate to a fund we are setting up for the man’s family, and Linfox has indicated they will match those donations. “But we are also calling for a full investigation into the incident, and for the coroner to examine how hyper-competitive road freight industry and the inadequate pay and conditions of truck drivers are contributing to more deaths on the road.”
A Linfox spokesman said the company did not comment on donations, but “conditionally we would match what colleagues contribute”.>>
<<There has heavy traffic on the F3 freeway north of Sydney after a truck caught on fire just before 11:00am AEDT today. The accident blocked all northbound lanes at Mount White, but traffic is now moving slowly after a lane was reopened. It is not yet known what caused the blaze.
Kate Martin was driving on the freeway when the accident happened. “It was on fire, really badly on fire, black smoke just streaming out of the truck,” she said. “It took a while for the police to arrive. It was burning for about 10 minutes before any services arrived.”>>
<<Commuters on the New South Wales Central Coast are being urged to delay their drive to Sydney after a crash involving a semi-trailer and several cars on the F3 freeway, near Mount White.
The Ambulance Service says two women and a teenage girl are in a stable condition in hospital after the accident. Roads and Traffic Authority spokesman Alec Brown says all three southbound lanes are blocked and traffic is backed up for three kilometres.
Mr Brown says it is not known how long it will take to clear the accident. “It’s impossible to predict. It really does depend on how smoothly it goes,” he said. “We’ve removed one truck already. We’re working on the rest of the vehicles and that’s something we’re doing as a priority.”
Traffic is being diverted onto the Old Pacific Highway.>>
Motorway Widening CancerRoad Widening is a Chicken and Egg causality dilemma – widen it and they shall come and then congest it, so widen it again…
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<<It doesn’t matter who’s right in this situation. The bigger problem has been the failure of the Australian government for setting unrealistic freight rail goals for Port Botany.
After setting a goal of shipping 40 percent of all Port Botany cargo by rail, the Australian government has dropped its target to 28 percent
“’Forty per cent was unrealistic and unachievable and typified Labor’s propensity to pluck figures out of the air,” the Transport Minister, Gladys Berejiklian, told the Sydney Morning Herald.
The increased number of trucks on the road is already causing considerable delays for motorists. Last Friday, one semi-trailer jack-knifed across one highway, according to the Herald, causing a traffic jam roughly 5 miles long.>>
Crushed between two large trucks on the Great Western Highway
Blue Mountains, New South Wales, Australia
[Photo by Top Notch Video, Blue Mountains Gazette, 20130213, p.9]
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The Great Western Highway over the Blue Mountains west of Sydney is becoming an increasingly dangerous thoroughfare as the New South Wales Government steadily transforms it into a faster expressway designed for larger trucks and increasing the B-Double menace.
This highway is a regional route to towns like Bathurst and Orange and passes through many small towns and villages. Yet the trucking lobby and State Government don’t care about local safety or amenity. The wider and faster expressway is just carved through each town and village in turn, preventing safe crossing, dividing communities and prioritising the commercial imperatives of express road freight over human lives.
Hardly a week goes by without the local newspaper, the Blue Mountains Gazette, reporting a serious collision along our Great Western Highway.
All too frequently such collisions occur on the already widened expressway sections that are sold to the community as ‘safety upgrades’. All too frequently across the State and the country, we read about collisions on these expressways that have involved trucks – trucks speeding, trucks tailgating, trucks exceeding weight limits, drunk or drugged up truck drivers under the pressure of unrealistic delivery deadlines all hours of the day and night.
Local people who use these regional roads are now forced to confront larger and faster trucks, and B-doubles with trailers, hurtling along nudging above increased speed limits brought in by government planners. Ordinary road users are now risking the lives of themselves and their passengers as they are forced to increasingly share regional roads with the B-Double Menace.
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Get out of my way! I’m on an unrealistic deadline!
(The B-Double Menace)
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Just over a week ago, on the Great Western Highway at Blackheath, a Sydney woman driving in her car mid Wednesday morning toward the town of Orange braked behind a large truck that suddenly stopped on the highway in front of her. She glanced in the rear vision mirror only in horror to see a second large truck bearing down on her at speed. It slammed in to the back of her car, pushing her car compressed up against the large truck in front of her.
The woman, 34 year-old Sarina Heta was sandwiched in contorted metal that was her car, unable to escape and lucky to be alive. Her wrecked car, a Kia Rio sedan, is shown in the top photo.
Ms Heta was trapped in her car in a state of shock for 45 minutes until rescued by and the Fire Brigade and paramedics.
<<Blue Mountains emergency services were called to the scene about 10.50am where they found the woman trapped in her car. She was treated by ambulance officers while other emergency services workers spent an anxious 45 minutes working to safely remove her from the vehicle. Ms Heta was flown by helicopter to Westmead Hospital where she was in a stable condition and already reflecting on her miraculous survival.>>
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“I remember just taking a big breath and taking the steering wheel and actually thinking it was over for me. I was a lucky girl that day with a group of angels looking over me. I just keep thinking, I must have done something good, or I have to do something amazing now I have another chance.” said Ms Heta.
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Ed: This poor woman. It is plainly unjust that ordinary road users should have to experience life-threatening encounters with dangerous trucks.
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So why did the first truck stop on the highway?
More importantly, why didn’t the second truck stop safely?
Was the truck driver distracted talking on his mobile phone as many of these drivers frequently are observed, without being caught?
Is the bastard still driving?
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There are few if any police patrolling the highway. There is only one speed camera on the Great Western Highway and that is at Warrimoo over 30km away. These truck drivers are cowboys racing through the Blue Mountains as if they’re on a raceway and they couldn’t care less about any other road users. Other road users just get in their way.
Ordinary Blue Mountains road users have constantly complained about truck driver behaviour along the Great Western Highway; yet the State Government, local politicians and the police do nothing.
One resident wrote on social media: “The trucks very rarely travel at 60km through the town. . . There is no point trying to out run them as they are more powerful and you end up exceeding the speed limit,” wrote Alex Michie. “The road is fine . . . it’s the halfwits driving on it that is the problem,” wrote Josh Steel.
Many of these large B-Double trucks cart sand, soil or rock into Sydney from quarry sites located in the Central West region of New South Wales. But when they are empty travelling out of Sydney, they rip along speeding over 90kph and tail-gating at all hours, menacing other road users.
A root cause of the truck speeding problem is that the truck drivers themselves are not paid by the hour. The transport industry remuneration structure has long surrendered Award-based pay for individual pay contracts. Truck drivers get paid not an hourly rate, but by the trip rate. The more trips a driver does, the more the driver gets paid, so speed has become a motivator for more pay.
This may make the job costing easier for the company accountants of the trucking companies or the corporate clients of the trucking companies, but it encourages unreasonably fast driving incentives which has dangerous implications for all road users, and the government allowing this must be held largely responsible and culpable.
Past local politician for the Blue Mountains, Bob Debus, approved hundreds of millions be spent transforming the regional highway into a trucking expressway a decade ago. This remains the State Government’s agenda.
Yet the Great Western Highway passes through twenty-one local communities over the Blue Mountains between the end of the M4 Motorway in outer Sydney and Lithgow, a road distance of 87km.
Lapstone
Glenbrook
Blaxland
Warrimoo
Valley Heights
Springwood
Faulconbridge
Linden
Woodford
Hazelbrook
Lawson
Bullaburra
Wentworth Falls
Leura
Katoomba
Medlow Bath
Blackheath
Mount Victoria
Hartley
Little Hartley
Old Bowenfels
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Many of these communities also have families and in many cases local schools. Many of these communities have their own 60kph maximum speed zones to allow for local street access, local traffic and indeed pedestrians of all ages. Many school crossings and school 40kph speed zones exist along the Great Western Highway. The encouragement of a 80kph trucking expressway transformation of the Great Western Highway is incongruent with its local use.
In some cases the government’s trucking expressway transformation of the highway has completely divided communities to the extent that there is no sign that a community even exists. When it was their turn, the communities of Lapstone and Linden succumbed entirely to the expressway imperative. Other communities are denied local vehicle access or access that is so contorted as to have made the local communities second rate citizens, like Warrimoo and now parts of Wentworth Falls.
When the expressway juggernaut came through town in Leura, Medlow Bath and Katoomba eight years or so ago, local properties were inundated by flash flooding caused directly by redirected highway stormwater design.
Recently Lawson and Hazelbrook have been witness to the bulldozing of heritage and amenity as the four lanes lobotomised their villages into a 80kph Blaxland byway.
As the expressway juggernaut arrives it carves through more native vegetation and habitat.
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Destruction in progress at Boddington Hill in early 2012, east of Wentworth FallsGreat Western Highway, Blue Mountains, NSW
(Photo by Editor 20120201, free in public domain, click photo to enlarge)
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Bullaburra residents sensibly got involved in the expressway process early, drafted their own re-design for their community and thought that had a special deal with the RTA-come-RMS. But although the clever Government consultants have listened, the RTA has got its way. The trucks will be able to set their cruise control to nudge 85kph through this bucolic Bullaburra..
The trucking companies would like to minimise their transit times across the Blue Mountains, simply because in transport, time is money.
A recent trucking strategy has been to introduce bigger trucks so that more can be carted by each driver. This is why the Blue Mountains has seen a steady increase in B-Doubles – rigid trucks with a bogie trailer. On designated motorways in New South Wales, these B-Doubles are 26 metres long. In western Victoria and South Australia, B-Triples have been allowed, basically equating to the Road Trains of Outback Australia.
Also, most of these newer trucks have more powerful turbo diesel engines so that they can travel faster with the increased gross weights.
The 87km Blue Mountains section of the Great Western Highway lies between the end of the M4 Motorway at Emu Plains where trucks can sit on 110kph and Lithgow, where the highway opens up to 100kph passing by very few communities.
It is this populated variable speed 87km section that is the bane of the trucking companies and so their lobbying target to government to transform it into a trucking expressway to serve them. If the designated average travel time over the 87km Blue Mountains section is say 1 hour and 20 minutes, the cumulative billions being spent to transform the Great Western Highway into a trucking expressway could at the absolute best expect to save just 20 minutes truck transit time. This is even if all traffic lights and pedestrian crossings were removed so that the trucks could cruise on 90kph, through this Blue Mountains section.
Cost benefit analysis? Has it been done by anybody?
The proposed Mount Victoria bypass is set to cost over a billion dollars alone, to save perhaps just 2 minutes truck transit time.
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The crazy planning Elephant in the Room that has been ignored in the wake of all these billions, is that once the trucks arrive in metropolitan Sydney, their transit times blow out in the congestion.
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Our Editor wrote the following article which was published in the local Blue Mountains Gazette 7th January 2009. It is pertinent, because within a 100 metres or so of the truck collision that impacted Sarina Heta this month, another woman, Blackheath resident Betty Dowdell, was not so lucky.
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Faster trucks Bob?
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<<Blackheath resident Betty Dowdell was hit and run by a semi last month less than a truck length from Blackheath’s main intersection [SMH 16/12/08]. On 18th November a B-double caused a pile up on Richmond Road. Drug utensils were allegedly found in the driver’s compartment [SMH 19/11/08].
On 24 July around 3pm between Lawson and Bullaburra a Volvo B-double driver “lost control of the vehicle and collided head-on with a white light goods van heading west.” The 56-year-old Leura man driving the van was killed. [BMG 30/7/08].
On 3 October at 9.15am, a motorcyclist collided head-on with a semi-trailer on the wrong side of the Bells Line of Road at Mt Tomah [AAP 4/10/08]. On 29 March last year, a semi driver over-turned at Mt Vic. In 2004, on 25 February at 11pm a semi laden with mixed chemicals failed to negotiate a sharp bend at the bottom of Mt Vic pass. The truck rolled, killing the driver and spilling a load of hydrochloric acid and herbicide.
I recall driving back from Mt Tomah a few years ago with my family. An oncoming truck was well over the double lines and I was forced onto the gravel shoulder to avoid a head-on.
Speeding traffic is making our two highways more dangerous. Highway patrols and speed cameras are almost non-existent in the Mountains. Many collisions occur on sections of the highway that are already four lanes. Government policies are encouraging more, and bigger trucks to drive faster while rail options remain ignored.
Why is our federal member Bob Debus MP encouraging faster trucks through the Mountains?>>
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Just because highways are transformed into expressways, doesn’t make them safer.
This is the six-laned M4 motorway at Emu Plains.
A truck driver not concentrating, wiped out and killed cyclists out for a ride in the cycle lane.
10th April 2010.
May they rest in peace.
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Footnote
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On the other side of the M4 motorway from the above cyclist collision at Emu Plains, but this time heading east, a cyclist in the cycle lane was hit and killed by a car.
Blue Mountains resident, Marc Simone, 43, was cycling in the cycle lane at 7:30am Saturday 16th February 2013, when an incompetent P-plater veered and hit and killed Marc.
Marc had been training to cycle over 3,900 km to Darwin to raise money for Mission Australia.
[Source: ‘Marathon Mission Ends in Tragedy’, 20130220, journalist B.C. Lewis, Blue Mountains Gazette newspaper, p.1]
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[Ed: Any highway, motorway or road that has ‘cycle lanes’ are death traps unless there is a concrete barrier keeping reckless and incompetent vehicle drivers killing cyclists.]
B-Double truck plying the Great Western Highway
New South Wales, Australia
(Photo by Editor 20121005, free in public domain, click image to enlarge)
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It’s all about trucks, bigger trucks, more trucks.
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An Innocuous Announcement
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The government of the State of New South Wales (NSW) in Australia late last month announced its plans to rename New South Wales’ major roads, highways, freeways and tollways under an alpha-numeric rebranding, akin to the British road numbering system.
Its ‘Alpha Numeric Route Marker Project‘ will affect more than 60 routes across NSW identified for the upgrade at a forecast cost of around $20 million. The delegated agency, the NSW Roads and Maritime Services (the rebranded ‘Roads and Traffic Authority’), is to roll out this new system of highway route numbering between March and December 2013.
[Source: ‘Have Your Say’, Bang the Table Pty Ltd (ACN 127 001 236) – a public relations consultancy outsourced by the NSW Government to deal with communities (voters) ^http://haveyoursay.nsw.gov.au/road-route-markers]
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The new system will include a combination of letters and numbers between 1 and 99.
Well, in the case of the Great Western Highway through the Blue Mountains (formerly called the Western Road) it will lose its historically familiar name and be rebranded the rather clinical and characterless ‘A32‘.
Instead of people travelling along the famous Great Western Highway over the Blue Mountains, they will simply follow the rather nondescript ‘A32‘, which will sound no different to the ‘A31‘ or the ‘A33‘, wherever they are?
Clinical and characterless trunk routing in the UK
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Removing the ‘Great Western Highway‘ name will erase its historical meaning to travellers – the oldest highway into inland Australia. The highway journey itself will supplanted by getting from A to B, as fast as possible. The Blue Mountains used to be a destination, but is steadily being transformed into a route from Sydney on the A32 to other destinations further west. So much for the tourism upon which so many Blue Mountains folk so vitally depend.
Grose Valley, Blue Mountains
(Photo by Editor 20060625, free in public domain)
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..What Blue Mountains? Where? Oh! Was that them?
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As the highway is widened and transformed into a trucking expressway, the Blue Mountains from the highway is looking urban just like Sydney. The Blue Mountains as a destination is steadly fading into another fast transit route into and out of Sydney, like the F3.
It is quite contradictory for the NSW Roads Minister, Duncan Gay, to promise that the road routes will retain their regular name, along with their new alpha-numeric designation. Why spend $20 million to rebrand the regular road naming with alpha-numeric road naming, only to retain the regular naming? The current road naming already displays the route number, as evidenced by the Route ‘32‘ symbol on the current Great Western Highway sign below. So why change it?
Great Western Highway across the Blue Mountains
(National Trucking Route 32)
(Photo by Editor 20121005, free in public domain)
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But the alpha numeric road renaming is clearly more than just renaming. It is ‘road rebranding‘ as a first phase of the government’s ‘road reclassification‘ strategy. It is one thing to upgrade a regional highway like the Great Western Highway; it is quite blue sky to reclassify it into a ‘Route of National Significance‘.
The alpha numeric road renaming is a precursor to reclassifying the Great Western Highway as an ‘A’ grade route of national significance, which is what the Hume Freeway is. Reclassification sets the precedent for the highway over the Mountains to bve upgraded to the likes of the Hume, if goivernmenyt so wishes. Both will be deemed A’ grade routes of national significance. It is a one size fits all approach from the urbane big brother in Macquarie Street.
This announced road renaming will follow a policy trend interstate in Queensland, Victoria and South Australia and so will be consistent with these adjoining states. NSW will mirror the road numbering system in Britain which has established ‘trunk roads‘ as designated long distance trucking routes interconnecting cities, ports and airports.
This road rebranding is about facilitating national trucking linehaul across state borders. It is all about encouraging more road freight across the country. For line-haul trucking, the aim is getting from A to B, as fast as possible. The slower the road journey, the higher the freight cost.
British Motorways: conceived, designed and built principly for road freight
[Source: ‘FTA man joins DfT for lorry charge development’, 20121004, by Chris Tindall, ^http://www.commercialmotor.com/latest-news/fta-s-ch, accessed 20121005]
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But the NSW Government’s official selling point is that its alpha numeric road rebranding is all so that motorists have “a better way to navigate NSW roads”. “It will be a more intuitive way for road users to navigate around NSW. These changes will help simplify journeys, making them safe, efficient and enjoyable.”
According to the RTA-RMS, the upgrade of the Great Western Highway is to ‘improve road safety’, ‘improve road freight efficiency’, ‘cater for the mix of through, local and tourist traffic and ‘be sensitive to the area’s natural environment, heritage and local communities.’ [Source: ^http://www.rta.nsw.gov.au/roadprojects/projects/great_western_hway/index.html]
However, one suspects given the RTA-RMS’s arrogant track record of its expressway bulldozing through roadside vegetation and local communities, that the primary mission is one-eyed to ‘improve road freight efficiency’. The other aims are merely for RTA-RMS public relations tricky appeasement, freeing up the expressway engineers to proceed business-as-usual.
Great Western Highway bulldozed out to four lanes at Katoomba
(Photo by The Habitat Advocate 20090501, free in public domain)
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The NSW Government persuasive language is that the alpha numeric rebranding is to ‘standardise the system’, to end the confusion between states, to identify road corridors ‘in order of their importance‘ and so ‘make it easier for motorists to know if they are travelling on a motorway or a route of national or state significance as they plan their trip.’ In any case the Government’s additional quip is that well road signs in NSW have not been reviewed for 30 years, so that is a valid reason to do so.
Trunk Route 32 starts from industrial areas and is designed purely to route trucking
The Route numbering designation has nothing to do with ordinary motorists; such association is political spin.
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But why do ordinary motorists need to know whether a road has national or state significance? The route numbers are already there on the current road signs across the State.
The NSW Opposition has dismissed this project as a ‘colossal waste of money that won’t save motorists a single minute in travel time or improve road conditions and safety.’ At the same time the NSW Opposition claims ‘motorists of this State want new roads, less congestion and better road conditions..‘ [Source: ‘New road names a colossal waste of money’, 20120927, by John Robertson, Robert Furolo, ^http://www.nswalp.com/media/news/new-road-names-a-colossal-waste-of-money/]
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Alpha-Numeric Renaming – a precursor to more Trucking Expressways
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Could there indeed be another reason for embarking on a $20 million road rebranding project? Is the rebranding in fact a precursor to legislating for B-double trucks to ply regional roads where they are currently prohibited?
It is one thing to upgrade a regional highway like the Great Western Highway; it is quite ‘blue sky’ to reclassifying a regional highway like the Great Western Highway into a ‘Route of National Significance‘.
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Ed:
This road re-branding is a ‘one-size-fits-all’ edict for uniformity. It serves to abet trucking lobbyists, to befit centralist bureaucrats, while de-personalising local communities in the process. It is a strategic precursor to rolling out more Trucking Expressways. It reeks of rancid Babyboomerism – the self-entitlement, the moral relativism, the utilitarianism, oil-dependent industries…all cultural throwbacks to the exploitative 20th Century. Die off, history beckons!
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Such reclassification facilitates central government roughshodding of legitimate local community concerns about the adverse and permanent impacts. When the RTA-RMS wants to bulldoze its trucking expressways through local communities, the legal reclassification overrides concerns about the impacts on environment, amenity, land values, equity and access. It is a prejudiced arrogant policy undermining local democratic rights.
The scheme is inherited from the recent NSW Government centralist planning policy that designated projects of State Significance and Projects of National Signifiance. In 2005, the NSW Government conceived its autocratic State Environmental Planning Policy (Major Projects) then in March 2006 imposed its ‘NSW Major Projects Assessment System‘ upon the people of NSW. It was all to ‘remove unnecessary red tape’, ‘clarify the assessment of major projects’, and ‘help NSW remain Australia’s economic powerhouse.’ [Ed: Sometimes spin can be so poetic]
It became known as Part 3A – a new part of the Environmental Planning and Assessment Act 1979 (EP&A Act) that simply overruled all other parts. Easy!
Under this planning policy and amended planning legislation, if the NSW Government deemed an infrastructure project to be of ‘State Significance’, then local council objections would be automatically overruled and community protests discarded. The State’s Planning Minister would have ultimate say supposedly in the State’s interest to allow the project to proceed and to roughshod all social impacts and all environmental impacts. It was a return to autocracy, just like in the days of kings and queens ruling over serfs and peasants.
But now for a road to be deemed a ‘Route of National Significance’ (i.e. get the ‘A’ branding), well, local communities will have even less of a voice.
The policy is absolute Putinesk (neo-‘Stalinist’).
Goodbye Bullaburra – set to be the next victim of the Trucking Expressway
(Photo by Editor 20120103, free in public domain, this is a photo for the historical record)
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This alpha numeric road renaming is ‘road rebranding‘ and the first phase of the government’s ‘road reclassification‘ strategy. It is part of a broader road centric freight agenda that ignores the demonstrable long-term and future-resilient benefits of rail freight nationally.
Reclassifying the Great Western Highway into the A32 Road of National Significance achieves more than upgrading the regional highway to a four-lane trucking expressway, all so that thousands of B-doubles can nudge 90kph on cruise control. The Road of National Significance is national trucking route policy. It will see the 1950’s conceived National Route 32 from Sydney 1154km to Cockburn on the South Australian Border and extend well beyond to Adelaide, Perth and Darwin.
It is 1950s mindset applied in 2013. It is all about facilitating interstate freight by 25 metre long B-Double trucks.
Trunk Route 32, somewhat further west The distance sign heading east from the NSW/SA Border at Cockburn
This is now the western terminus of National Route 32 following the implementation of alpha-numeric route marking in South Australia, Jan 2005.
[Source: ^http://www.ozroads.com.au/NSW/RouteNumbering/National%20Routes/32/nr32.htm]
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Meanwhile, hectare after hectare of Blue Mountains native vegetation is bulldozed to make way for the ‘Trucking Expressway‘.
Wentworth Falls bushland amenity disappearing for the Trucking Expressway
(Photo by Editor 20120201, free in pubic domain, click image to enlarge)
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Meanwhile, Australian wildlife slaughtered as roadkill is perpetuated and ignored by the RTA-RMS to make way for the ‘Trucking Expressway‘.
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Meanwhile, just because the road is wider and faster, humans are not exempt from becoming ‘roadkill’ either.
All we need do is look at Britain, its road-freight centric policy and its consequential trucking carnage legacy.
Trucking Expressways kill local communities in more ways than one
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Meanwhile, the ongoing trucking carnage legacy continues along already upgraded sections of the Great Western Highway:
[Source: “Frightening” figures released’, by journalist Krystyna Pollard, 20110914, Blue Mountains Gazette (newspaper), p.7]
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[Source: ‘Gone too soon’, by journalist Damien Madigan, 20110914, Blue Mountains Gazette (newspaper), p.1]
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[Source: ‘Highway mayhem’, by journalist Shane Desiatnik, 20110803, Blue Mountains Gazette (newspaper), p.1]
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Linehaul Trucking and pedestrians don’t mixTrucking Economics does not overrule!
[Source: Blue Mountains Gazette (newspaper]
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Speeding B-Double overturned at Lapstone on an already widened 4-laned section of the converted Trucking Expressway
[Source Blue Mountains Gazette, 20110729]
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What is preventing B-Triples bidding for access to Roads of National Significance?
‘A man has been fined after being stopped by police for allegedly speeding in the state’s Southern Highlands.
About 5.44am yesterday (Monday 5 March 2012), police were patrolling the (6-laned) Hume Highway at Mittagong, when they allegedly detected a white B-double (truck) travelling at a speed of 142kph in an 110kmh zone. They stopped the vehicle a short distance away and issued the 41-year-old male driver with a traffic infringement for exceed speed over 30km/h.
The fine for the offence is $1112.
[Ed: A poultry slap on the wrist fine? When 60+ tonnes is hurtling along the road at 142kph, how is this not attempted murder?]
Killer on the Road
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Mar 2012: ‘Fatal head-on in NSW’ (south of Oberon)
[Source: ‘Fatal head-on in NSW’, bigpondnews, Saturday, March 31, 2012, ^http://bigpondnews.com/articles/National/2012/03/31/Fatal_head-on_in_NSW_734843.html]
‘A truck driver has been killed, and three men have been airlifted to hospital, after two trucks collided head-on near Oberon, west of Sydney.
Police say the Isuzu table top truck and Mack prime mover logging truck crashed on Abercrombie Road, at Black Springs just before midnight (AEDT).
The Isuzu driver, aged in his 30s, died at the scene. Two other men inside suffered head and chest injuries, while the driver of the other truck, aged in his 60s, has an injury to his leg. Abercrombie Road is expected to remain closed until around 7am (AEDT).’
Typical prime mover logging truck (empty)
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Jul 2009: Recall the fatal truck crash east of Oberon three years ago…
‘One man died and another was airlifted to a Sydney hospital after a car and truck crashed head-on near Oberon yesterday afternoon.
Emergency services received reports about 1.12pm of a car hitting a truck on the Duckmaloi Road near Fearndale Road on the Sydney side of Oberon. Ambulance officers arrived and began treating the men involved in the accident. The passenger of the car was declared dead at the scene.
The 20-year-old male driver of the car was airlifted to Westmead Hospital with multiple fractures to his legs, arms and chest as well as head injuries. The truck driver was assessed by ambulance officers and did not require hospitalisation. Late last night the Duckmaloi Road was still close to non-residential traffic as spilt fuel and debris was cleaned from the site.
An Oberon trucker driver, who wished to remain anonymous, later said the Duckmaloi Road needed to be seriously looked at due to the large amount of traffic it carried.
“Along with the Bathurst road it is one of the two main veins into Oberon,” he said. “I believe around 200 trucks a day would use that road to get from Oberon to Sydney and back again.”
The truck driver added that for people who did not frequently use the Duckmaloi Road it could be very dangerous. “It can be bloody treacherous if you don’t know it,” he said.
“In one day I think we send about 50 trucks out and have 50 trucks come back in on it [the Duckmaloi Road]. “If you also add in the log trucks and the chip trucks than you would easily have 200 trucks a day on that road.”
[Ed: Two years later, $395,000 from the Australia Government went into widening the Duckmaloi Road. ^Read More]
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Fatal truck head-on near Oberon, NSW (2009)
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2012: Great Western Highway – Wentworth Falls East ‘trucking upgrade’
No 1 Feature: “Widening the highway to four lanes with sealed shoulders“!
No 1 Benefit: “Quicker journeys – in the region and to Sydney“!
‘Delays are expected today on a section of the Hume Highway in NSW after a crash involving two trucks near Marulan. NSW Police says a B-double carrying furniture rolled about 5km south of Marulan at 12.45am, spilling its load and blocking all northbound lanes. A semi-trailer travelling behind crashed into the rear of the truck…’
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Jul 2011: Near the same spot a year before..’Fatal crash near Marulan’
‘A report will be prepared for the coroner following a fatal highway crash near Marulan in the early hours of the morning.
About 12.45am this morning a B-double truck travelling north on the Hume Highway left the road and plunged into a deep roadside gully, rolling on to its side and taking out trees and a 10-meter section of guard rail in the process. The cause of the crash is still unknown and police investigations are continuing. No one else was injured in the crash.
The driver, a 47-year-old man from Glenfield, suffered severe injuries and died at the scene. He was travelling from Albury to Sydney when the accident occurred approximately 15km north of Goulburn.
[Ed: All night 60+ tonne all night bats out of hell and 60+ tonne all night zombies being driven to death by greedy retailers demanding pre-dawn delivery times. Overnight linehaul is al about unnatural sleep depravation. It is death waiting to happen. Driving on Australian highways aafter midnight has become Russian Roulette death wish to all road users. Meanwhile, Australian Truckers Association chairman David Simon says the government should also be encouraging more “AB-triples” — which are 51m long — and “BAB-quads”, which are two connected B-doubles.” [Read More]
Why have railway tracks, when trucking companies keep adding carriages and ring feeders?
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Mar 2012: B-Double truckers tampering with speed governors
[Source: ‘Police blitz on trucks widens’, by AAP, 20120307, ^http://www.weeklytimesnow.com.au/article/2012/03/07/453455_machine.html]
“Faster, faster..you’re a good operator!”
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‘New South Wales police have seized two South Australian trucks as part of a crackdown on unsafe practices in the road transport industry. Officers in NSW had intercepted 13 trucks from Scott’s Transport Industries as of today in a nationwide blitz on the Mt Gambier-based firm, which operates a fleet of 322 trucks and is suspected of serious safety breaches.
NSW police launched Operation Overland after one of the company’s B-doubles was detected travelling at 142kph on Monday.
An analysis of the company’s trucks’ movements has shown speeding by 32 of them.
Superintendent Stuart Smith said the two trucks were stopped after being identified as having defects, but it was too early to say if the defects were the result of tampering.
He said more of the company’s vehicles would be targeted for interception and comprehensive mechanical inspections.
“It’s not the 300, but it’s a large number,” Superintendent Smith said. “There’s a large number to go and the operation will continue for a number of days.”
Further actions by NSW Roads and Maritime Services will likely lead to a prosecution and significant fines.
Premier Barry O’Farrell said transport companies had been warned checks would become more regular. “Trucking companies should understand that what was then unprecedented action would become more regular if we had suspicions that there were cowboys driving trucks across the state’s roads, that it was likely to cause safety concerns for motorists,” Mr O’Farrell told reporters in Sydney.
Police have said an investigation of Lennons Transport Services, based in Sydney’s inner west, found eight trucks had been tampered with, including seven that had been modified to exceed the maximum speed of 100km/h. They have also charged a Lennons’ driver with dangerous driving causing the deaths of three members of one family on January 24.
Calvyn Logan, 59, and his elderly parents Donald and Patricia Logan, in their 80s, were killed when a Lennons‘ B-double truck careered onto the wrong side of the Hume Highway, near Menangle in southwest Sydney.
B-double truck driver Vincent Samuel George (33) killed three members of one family with his B-Double.
Court records also revealed that between 1998 and last year, George had his licence suspended five times and he has been convicted of 17 offences, including speeding and drink driving.
[^http://www.truckinlife.com.au/articles/2012/truck-collision-menangle-bridge]
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Police allege the driver’s truck had been tampered with to make it go faster.
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The RMS has also filed a series of summons in the NSW Supreme Court relating to driver fatigue at South Penrith Sand and Soil.
RMS alleges a series of offences relating to drivers’ work hours, rest hours and fatigue management. A cyclist was killed and three were injured after a truck driver working for the company veered into a breakdown lane and hit them on the M4 motorway on April 10, 2010.
The driver pleaded guilty last week to manslaughter.
Sydney’s M4: this is supposedly an RMS cycle lane
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Recall, RMS ‘upgrade features‘ at its Great Western Highway Wentworth Falls East section include:
“Improved cyclist access and safety – access for commuter and long distance cyclists will be provided by a 2.5 metre shoulder between Nelson and Dalrymple avenues.”
Try riding a bicycle through the Leura section, just up the Great Western Highway from Wentworth Falls
Spot the cycle lane…Russian Roulette anyone?
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Great Western Highway – being transformed into a trucking expressway so that bigger and more trucks can travel faster, all night long..Trucking Expressways are the antithesis of road safety
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Mar 2012: ‘Twelve more trucks had speeds tampered’
Another 12 trucks have been discovered with tampered speed limiters during a two-state police probe into dodgy practices (Ed: read ‘criminally culpable‘) in the industry.
Police inspecting Lennons Transport Services B-Double truck
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‘Operation Overland’
Operation Overland was launched into Scott’s Transport Industries on Monday. Ninety-eight of the South Australian transport company’s fleet of 322 heavy vehicles have since been intercepted for mechanical inspection.
On Thursday, police said they had found six trucks with tampered speed limiters. A day later, 12 more had been discovered, taking the total to 18.
Overall, 71 offences have been identified, including two trucks found to be overloaded.
Almost 70 defect notices have been issued. The probe into Scott’s Transport Industries began after one of its drivers was clocked travelling at 142km/h on the Hume Highway at Mittagong about 5.45am (AEDT) on Monday.
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Earlier this year, police swooped on Lennons Transport Services, in Sydney’s inner-west, where they discovered eight tampered trucks, including seven modified to exceed the 100km/h maximum.
Police Blitz at Lennons Transport Services
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It came after a Lennons driver was charged with dangerous driving causing the deaths of Calvyn Logan, 59, and his elderly parents Donald and Patricia Logan, in their 80s.
The truckie’s B-double allegedly careered onto the wrong side of the Hume Highway near Menangle and crashed into the trio’s car.
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Feb 2011: ‘Man dies after trucks collide on Hume Freeway, Baddaginnie’
Six-laned Hume Freeway – the wider and faster the expressway…All night trucking zombies
[Photo: Jon Hargest, Herald Sun]
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‘A man has died following a collision between two trucks on the Hume Freeway in Baddaginnie (Ed: Victoria, just south of the NSW border) just after midnight.
It’s believed one driver lost control of his truck which rolled onto the freeway moments before a second truck collided with it at 12.08am.
The driver of the second truck died and police are investigating the cause of the collision. The identity of the dead man is yet to be established.
The Hume Freeway is closed northbound at Violet Town and diversions are in place.’
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Comments:
Patrick of Rooney (20110215):
“Wake up and sip the coffee Victoria! We need thousands more speed cameras out there!”
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Andrew of Flemington (20110215):
“Worksafe Victoria, where are you?? Another tragic death caused by unsafe work practices. How many more deaths and injuries must occur before you finally step in?
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Feb 2011: ‘Logging truck driver kills car driver stopped at traffic lights outside Bathurst’
[Source: ‘One killed in truck crash‘, by Jo Johnson, Western Advocate, 20110201, ^http://www.westernadvocate.com.au/news/local/news/general/one-killed-in-truck-crash/2062626.aspx]
Media news often doesn’t travel outside one’s local area, so other Australians don’t realise the extent of the trucking carnage being inflicted across the country..Who says truck drivers are ‘professionals’?
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‘A 59-year-old local man is dead and two others seriously injured after a truck ploughed into three cars stopped at roadworks traffic lights on the O’Connell Road yesterday. The tragedy occurred at lunchtime, about 15 kilometres south of Bathurst.
Emergency services rushed to the scene to find people trapped in their cars. The road was immediately closed to traffic in both directions. Initial investigations have revealed that an unladen logging truck struck the vehicles, which were all making their way towards Bathurst at the time.
Police, ambulance and fire and rescue crews were called to the crash site at about 12.30pm. An air ambulance helicopter landed on the road near the accident to provide additional assistance.
Bathurst police Inspector Ross Wilkinson confirmed the driver of a red Toyota Camry died at the scene. He was a 59-year-old male from the O’Connell region.
The logging truck was travelling north when it slammed into the rear of the Toyota Camry, killing the man and seriously injuring a female passenger.
The driver of the next car in line, a silver Mazda Astina, was also in a serious condition yesterday afternoon, while the driver of a bronze Holden Rodeo was taken to Bathurst Base Hospital for observation.
Inspector Wilkinson said Chifley Local Area Command’s crash investigation unit attended the scene and investigations into the fatality would continue. The driver of the logging truck was uninjured and is helping police with their inquiries.
Traffic was diverted via Brewongle and The Lagoon and drivers heading to Oberon from Bathurst late yesterday afternoon were advised to divert at Hartley via Jenolan Caves Road.
The roadworks were being carried out by the NSW Roads and Traffic Authority (Ed: recently rebranded ‘RMS’) , between the Wests Lane turn-off to Brewongle and Ridge Road.
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Feb 2010: ‘Speeding B-Double Blayney Cattle Truck Rolls Over – kills/maims 21 cattle’
Injured cattle shot after speeding cattle truck overturned on bend near Blayney (Central NSW)
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Traffic between Blayney and Bathurst was detoured through Millthorpe yesterday after a semi-trailer cattle truck overturned while negotiating a sharp left bend about three kilometres out of Blayney.
Drivers on the Mid Western Highway had to slow to avoid runaway cattle after the accident on the outskirts of Blayney shortly after 11am.
Inspector Ross Wilkinson from Chifley Area Command said that police were continuing their investigations into the cause of the accident that disrupted highway traffic for four hours and killed 21 of the 96 cattle on board the truck.
“Police will issue an infringement notice to the truck driver at a later stage,” he said. “It’s a timely reminder for drivers to take care when driving in the changing weather conditions.” [Ed: Yet another dangerous coyboy truckie gets but a slap on the wrist. The driver deserves a custodial sentence for recklessly causing pain and suffering to the cattle, and barred from cattle truck driving for life].
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The road between Bathurst and Blayney was closed for 30 minutes while cranes were brought in to lift the truck back onto the road. RTA workers, who were among the first at the accident scene, began directing traffic and slowing motorists down to avoid the cattle before police arrived.
“We’ve been trying to keep things flowing,” one RTA worker said. “A couple of steers got away but they’ve pretty well got them under control.”
Blayney Shire Council overseer, Paul Wade, said that Blayney Shire Council staff were working with the RTA to divert Bathurst bound traffic through Millthorpe. Mr Wade said that council staff worked with the emergency services and the truck’s driver to help control the traffic and move the surviving cattle into a nearby paddock. The council’s ranger euthanized a number of cattle at the scene…
Yesterday’s accident is the second time a semi-trailer has overturned on the same winding stretch of road on the outskirts of Blayney in recent months. On January 28 traffic on the highway was disrupted for four hours when a semi-trailer travelling towards Blayney overturned while negotiating a left bend near yesterday’s accident scene.
Play Video (Prime News):
Click image to play video
(when running, double click on video to enlarge)
NB. The Rural Fire Service at Canobolas have since deleted the above video, so here is one from Channel 9:
All night truck driving solo – another dead truck driver
The driver of this B-Double was killed when it hit an embankment on the Pacific Highway near Corindi (Ed: north of Coffs Harbour) on Friday night
[Photo by Frank Reward]
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A man was killed in an horrific crash near Dirty Creek, west of Corindi, on Friday night in what is amounting to a horror weekend on NSW roads.
A B-Double being driven by the 48-year-old man, from Queensland, had been travelling south on the Pacific Highway when it appears to have left the road and crashed into an embankment.
According to a police statement, police and emergency services were called to the crash just after 11pm where the driver, the sole occupant of the truck, had suffered serious injuries and died at the scene. According to the statement, the impact of the crash had detached the two trailers from the prime mover, but no further details were available last night…
This crash adds another death to the mounting NSW road toll with the number rising to eight since the start of the long weekend, five more than for the same long weekend last year.
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Mar 2007: Hume Highway again.. ‘head-on truck crash kills driver’
A fatal truck crash has closed the Hume Highway near Coolac, in southern NSW. Two trucks collided head-on on the highway, sparking fires in both cabs, about 6.15am (AEDT) today, police said. The driver of a semi-trailer, carrying groceries north on the highway, died at the scene after rescue efforts failed to save him. The driver of a southbound truck, carrying metal, escaped with minor injuries…
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Ed: The Truck Menace is blatantly out of control. ‘Industry self-regulation’ never works and is nothing but a costing cutting government cop out. Meanwhile Australian Liberal Labor governments continue to pour billions of taxpayers’s money into building bigger and faster dedicated trucking expressways. And so the trucks get bigger and faster and Australia’s highway carnage of families continues unabated…
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Watch video:
(includes sound)
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Postcript:
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Well we didn’t have to wait bloody long. The day after posting this article there was another B-double multiple fatality…dead driver, dead and maimed cattle under his care…
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Speeding truckie hooning a fully laden B-Double cattle truck, loses it on bend – kills himself and the cattle
‘A salvage operation continued into last night to remove a laden cattle truck that crashed into the Tangaratta Creek Bridge near Tamworth yesterday, claiming the life of the driver.
Oxley Highway was closed for hours as emergency crews worked at the scene, first freeing the driver’s body from the truck’s cabin, which had been crushed against the bridge pylons, and then removing dead cattle and the truck from the scene.
The B-double truck left the road and rolled at the bridge on the Oxley Highway, about 10km west of the city, about 3pm. Police believe the truck was travelling south, bound for Cargill abattoir at Tamworth, when it lost control on a sweeping bend that has been the scene of other serious accidents over the years. [Sky News: Police said the vehicle failed to negotiate a right-hand bend near Tangaratta Bridge, causing it to roll down an embankment.]
An off-duty police officer was first on the scene.
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Police officers euthanased distressed cattle that had been crushed or injured in the trailers, which rested on their sides near the creek.
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Oxley Local Area Command duty officer, Inspector Jeff Budd, said the recovery effort was expected to continue late into last night. He said firefighters had set up booms to contain the diesel spill in the creek.
…Yesterday’s fatal crash happened at the same bridge where a horrific bus accident occurred on January 5, 1992, claiming the lives of five people. A double-decker Pioneer bus en route from Brisbane to Melbourne slammed into the bridge on a Saturday night. The crash claimed the lives of an eight-year-old girl, as well as three women and a man.
Inspector Budd said police were continuing their investigations into the cause of yesterday’s crash and a report would be prepared for the coroner.’
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Meanwhile pig carcasses have been scattered over a motorway in Sydney’s southwest after two trucks collided early today. Police say the heavy vehicles crashed shortly after 2am on the M7 westlink motorway at Prestons, near the Bernera Road off-ramp. The truck carrying the pig carcasses rolled, throwing the meat all over the road.
Pig carcasses picked up off M7
http://www.skynews.com.au/national/article.aspx?id=735802&vId=
One of the few remaining clusters of mature Blue Mountains Ash (Eucalytus oreades)
endemic to the Upper Blue Mountains
[They are listed on BMCC’s Significant Tree Register
..including the dozen or so killed to widen the highway]
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What a steaming crock Blue Mountains Council’s (BMCC) Significant Tree Register is!
The 73 listed trees or listed tree communities on BMCC’s register listed as ‘significant‘ means exactly what? ‘BMCC significant’ is a lying euphemism for ‘big‘ and ‘expendable‘, confirmed by the fact that every time anyone wants to kill one of the listed trees, they can.
The ‘Register‘ should be renamed a ‘Remnant‘, reflecting the reducing remnancy of the Blue Mountains forests under the control of BMCC.
And many trees on the Register are indeed exotic, if not weeds. For instance, listed tree #3 is an exotic Rhododendron, #18 is an exotic cherry tree, #28 is a Radiata Pine – a listed environmental weed in another department of BMCC.
BMCC’s Significant Tree Register?
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BMCC’s Significant Tree Register dates back to 1988, probably because of Australia’s bicentennial heritage goodwill of that year, and the likelihood of BMCC getting grant recognition for its register. That would have been a purely political froth event of no substance nor perpetuity.
‘This Development Control Plan has been prepared pursuant to Council’s resolution of 17th November, 1987 and was adopted on 21st June, 1988. The Plan encompasses the Register of Significant Trees, established in 1984. (BMCC File 7717C-4)…This Development Control Plan is to apply to all land within the boundaries of the City of the Blue Mountains.’
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Objectives of Significant Tree Register
. The purpose of this Development Control Plan is to:
(a) identify and protect those trees listed on the Register;
(b) promote greater public awareness of the existence of the Register, and the individual items listed;
(c) ensure existing and, importantly, prospective land owners, are made aware of the Significant Trees which may be located on their property; and
(d) ensure correct on-going care and maintenance of those trees listed, through the recommendations included with the significant tree register.’
What disingenuous lying crap!
(a) None of the listed trees is afforded any legal protection. Worse, BMCC does not raise a finger to expend effort or cost to challenge anyone wishing to kill any of the listed trees.
(b) Since 1988, BMCC has done diddly squat to promote any public awareness of either its register or any of its listed trees. Yet, BMCC certainly has killed a few of them. The last time a tree was added to the register was 1991, reflecting the three year extent of Council’s interest, memory and planning,
(c) see (a)
(d) I challenge BMCC to present any record of any “on-going care and maintenance of those trees listed”. Obviously this object clause was drafted by a naive external consultant.
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Listed Trees – Cases in Point
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#5 Blue Mountains Ash
(Eucalyptus oreades)
(Opposite 252 Old Bathurst Rd. Katoomba Opposite Lot 2 DP707, listed 6.5.84, since chainsawed)
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#29 Smooth Barked Apple, Red Gum
(Angophora costata)
(Opposite 363 Great Western Highway, Bullaburra, opposite Lot 173, DP13407, Listed 17.7.85,
condemned by the Roads & Traffic Authority in September 2008 to widen the highway into a 4 laned Trucking Expressway)
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New South Wales Government sentence imposed upon this Angophora:
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“The Angophora (Sydney red gum) tree: the large tree is situated to the east of Boronia Road.
To retain the Angophora tree the highway would have to be widened either towards the railway line or the private properties. In both cases, land would have to be acquired, either from RailCorp or private land owners. The tree’s overhanging branches would have to be trimmed and there would be construction activities around the tree.
Arborist advice is that the consequent loss of tree roots and the pruning would instigate the decline of the tree. Angophora are highly sensitive to construction impacts such as changes to draining patterns and soil compaction. For road construction and safety reasons the tree will have to be removed.”
[Source: ‘Great Western Highway Upgrade – Community Update September 2008, ‘Bullaburra East – Ridge Street, Lawson to Genevieve Road Bullaburra, by Roads and Traffic Authority]
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Ed: Well, humans can find ways of justifying anything when it suits them – ecological destruction, genocide, wars, anything. Governments and road making organisations like the RTA are collectives of people with mandates that are self-serving.
The RTA (since rebranded) does not have to widen the highway through Bullaburra. It is only doing so to encourage greater truck and car traffic and so that such road traffic can flow faster. Bigger and more roads is the mandate for this road maker. The tradition of slowing down through local towns and villages has been dismissed. Utilitarian convenience is supplanting local rights and values. Other options have been deliberately ignored such as upgrading rail freight logistics and public transport (the rail runs adjacent to and follows the same route as this highway). Land acquistion is an easy process for the RTA. It’s management is just choosing not to take this option because it sees no value in the tree nor in Bullaburra’s amenity.
The tree’s overhanging branches would not have to be trimmed and construction activities could be well away from the tree, if the RTA management so choosed.
The RTA’s standard justification “safety reasons” had to be the clincher. the RTA relies on the ‘safety justification’ as its fallback to get its way, because it has convinced that no-one can reasonably challenge such a justification. That the M4 Motorway with its six lanes has become one of the most deadly RTA roads in New South Wales does not seem to trouble the RTA sufficiently to invest in making the M4 safer.The RTA is hypocritical about road safety.
The value of encouraging faster and bigger trucks and more cars to race through Bullaburra at 80+kph is more important to it than conserving some tree. That this particular tree has been dated by a specialist arborist as being older than300 years and so would have stood when the Three Explorers first crossed the Blue Mountains in 1813, is dismissed as worthless by the RTA and the New South Wales Government. Labor and Liberal are no different in this world view of ‘progress’. Bullaburra is set to be transformed into a Blaxland with bigger trucks racing through it. Bullaburra will become even more divided that what it is now.
If this tree were a war cemetery, there is no question that the cemetery value would be respected and a trucking expressway would not be carved through it.
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Les Wielinga
NSW Roads and Traffic Authority Chief (2006-2012)
Executioner of Bullaburra’s Angophora
and Strategic Planner of the Trucking Expressway juggernaut through the Blue Mountains
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#33 Scribbly Gum
(Eucalyptus sclerophylla/Eucalyptus piperita hybrid)
(Cnr St Georges Cres. & Adeline St. Faulconbridge, Lot 5 DP8526 , Listed 24.8.85,
condemned in Sep 2011 for selfish dual occupancy housing development)
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Blue Mountains Council arborist has condemned the tree as having ‘extensive decay’.
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Trial by Ordeal?
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Local residents protesting to save the tree, believe this native Scribbly Gum to be quite healthy and that the arborist’s so-called ‘decay‘ is in fact a natural fungus. The residents believe that Council’s arborist’s assessment has incorrectly condemned the tree and that only after the tree trunk is chainsawed will the proof of the tree’s health be revealed.
It will be akin to being a Medieval Trial by Ordeal imposed on those suspected of being a witch. An example is where a priest would demand a suspect to place his hand in the boiling water. If after three days, God had not healed his wounds, the suspect was guilty of the crime.
In the case of this Scribbly Gum, if after chainsawing it, the trunk shows no signs of internal decay, then it can be confirmed as having being healthy, but by then it will be dead.
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The Council’s assessment:
“It should also be noted that the significant tree has been assessed as not being viable for retention in any case as the result of extensive decay throughout the trunk. This matter isdiscussed in more detail in the body of the report.”
[Source: Blue Mountain Council, Business Paper, Using Land for Living Item 20, Ordinary Meeting, 20110628, Development Application No. X/443/2010 for a detached dual occupancyconsisting of a singe storey dwelling and a two storey dwelling on Lot 5 SEC. 2 DP 8526, 47 St Georges Crescent, Faulconbridge, File No: F06738 – X/443/2010 – 11/85977, Clause 44, p.214]
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#61 Blue Mountains Ash
(Eucalyptus oreades – once was a ridgetop forest)
(Railway Reserve opposite Katoomba Hospital, Listed 6.11.89,
half the trees chainsawed in 2008 to widen the highway into a Trucking Expressway.
What’s left is a token coppice so that the RTA can claim on paper that it respected the ‘significant’ status.)
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Relevance and future of the Significant Tree Register
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In November 2011, Blue Mountains Councillor Janet Mays presented a Notice of Motion to Council:
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“That the Council receives a report detailing the role and relevance of Council’s Significant Tree Register, including the cost of both managing and maintaining that Register.”
Background
The recent decision by the Land & Environment Court, to uphold an appeal by the applicants at 47 St Georges Crescent, Faulconbridge, includes permission to remove a tree that is listedon Council’s Significant Tree Register that decision brings into question the relevance of this Register.
The report should outline the role and relevance of the Register in providing decision-making capability to Council’s Planning Officers. The role and relevance of the Register should then be considered in terms of benefits and cost of maintaining this Register. Dependant on the benefits and the costs, the future utility of the Register should also be discussed.”
[Source: Blue Mountains Council, Business Paper, Notices of Motion, Item 26, Ordinary Meeting, 20111122, Subject: Council’s Significant Tree Register, File No: F06745 – 11/178956, p.173]
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Ed: Meanwhile, anthropocentric prejudice sees the National Trust of Australia (an organisation supposedly committed to promoting and conserving Australia’s indigenous, natural and historic heritage) recognise people as ‘National Living Treasures’. No thought is given to Australian native trees, many which have stood longer than any colonist set foot on Australian soil. Surely, a 300+ year old native tree has more claim to being a national living treasure.
On 4 March 2012, two days ago, we hear that Queensland mining magnate Clive Palmer has been named a National Living Treasure. Palmer has made is fortune exploiting Australia’s landscape for his personal gain. Clearly, Australian Governments continued to be dominated by 20th Century Baby Boomer exploitative world views.
Cartage Australia’s demonstration B-double sand tipper Volvo truck 22 metres long – parked in Katoomba, Blue Mountains.
(Photo by Editor, 20120210, free in public domain, click photo to enlarge)
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Like most news across the Blue Mountains region concerning issues likely to pose a significant impact upon the community and the environment, one learns about it on the grapevine.
So two weeks ago, I learnt about this Melbourne trucking company planning to introduce 22 metre long B-Double trucks along the Great Western Highway. Such long trucks are currently banned as being too long for this regional highway through the many towns, villages and residential and school zones of the Blue Mountains.
I learn that the trucking company, Cartage Australia, is due to demonstrate one of its B-Doubles to the local community and in the process try to justify why it should be exempt from the current New South Wales Government prohibition. But the announcement is not a general public one, so naturally only a handful of the community turn up to the demonstration, because only a handful of the community were made aware.
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Why Are Oversized and Overmass Trucks Restricted?
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Heavy vehicles using the Great Western Highway between Victoria Pass and Lapstone Hill are currently restricted to being no more than 19 metres in length. Such vehicles are deemed to be ‘oversized’ and or ‘overmass’ to mix normally with day-to-day traffic.
According to the RTA’s (recently renamed ‘RMS’)…
“As stated in the General Class 1 Oversize (Load-Carrying Vehicle) Notice 2007 and the General Class 1 Oversize (Special-Purpose Vehicle) Notice 2007, night travel on the Great Western Highway between the Nepean River at Emu Plains and Medlow Bath for vehicles wider than 2.5 metres or longer than 19 metres is only permitted between 1.00am and 5.00am.”
In New South Wales, rules governing B-Doubles are prescribed under the RTA B-Doubles General_notice_2005 (The Road Transport (General) Act 2005 – General B-Double Notice under Division 4 of Part 2 of the Road Transport (Mass, Loading and Access) Regulation, 2005. >Read Regulation (pdf) (690kb)
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The Sand Cartage Contract
.Hy-Tec’s Sand Quarry south of Hartley
(Google Maps)
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Melbourne-based construction material trucker, Cartage Australia, is bidding for a sand cartage contract to Hy-Tec to deliver construction sand to the Sydney markets using 22 metre B-double trucks. This will mean many of these long B-double sand trucks dominating the Great Western Highway over the Blue Mountains. The route is to be from Hy-Tec’s sand quarry from Jenolan Caves Rd south of the village of Hartley to Sydney.
Hy-Tec is a group of companies which are wholly owned by publicly listed Adelaide Brighton Limited, a prominent Australian construction materials and lime producing company with operations throughout Australia. Two major construction projects that Hy-Tec is currently delivering to in Sydney include ‘The Ark’ – a 21 storey commercial high-rise in North Sydney and Presida’s T1 industrial 35,000 cubic metre industrial building complex at the Norwest Business Park in Bella Vista.
Director of Cartage Australia, Wayne Vella, argues that his Volvo fleet of B-doubles are “longer but safer”. Yet according to its website,
“HY-TEC’s focuses on accurate delivery times, taking direct customer enquiries at each concrete plant and quarry, supported by a large fleet of concrete trucks for quick response and best in class on time delivery.”
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This time-critical delivery focus necessitates that the sand cartage from Hartley to Sydney will be time critical. This means the pressure will be on drivers to meat delivery deadlines and so they be in a hurry and so this poses risks of more trucks and larger heavier trucks speeding along the Great Western Highway, undermining the safety of the road for other road users.
Cartage Australia provides its services 24 hours a day, seven days a week, hauling quarry products around Melbourne – and more recently, throughout Sydney, following the opening of a new facility late last year. This means the sand cartage over the Great Western Highway has potential to be 24 hours a day.
“We opened the Sydney operation so that we can offer the same sort of service to customers there as we provide in Melbourne, and so that we can continue to grow the company. Customers can call the company at any time and we’ll strive to get the job done for them,” says Ray.
Although the Sydney arm of the business has only been fully operational for a few months, Ray is already looking at ways to further grow the business. “Wayne and I want to grow Cartage Australia as much as we can,” says Ray, as he points to further growth planned for 2012.
[Source: ‘Cartage Australia – driven by determination’, Prime Moving Magazine, February 2012, ^http://www.primemovermag.com.au/featured/article/cartage-australia-driven-by-determination]
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The Big Sell
At the outdoors meeting on Friday 10th February 2012 staged by Cartage Australia to a handful of the local community at Katoomba, the demostration truck was all but straight out of the factory. It was bright, shiny, new tyres, flawless and made for selling the company’s point of view. The sell was all about providing Performance Based Standards (PBS) for trucking to get around the 19 metre truck length restriction. That needs to be explained by government.
Director Wayne Vella explaining all the positives about his shiny FM480 Volvo
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But when Vella started his long spiel about the truck’s state of the art features and benefits, the focus became all about the magnificence of his showroom truck and not about the community’s concerns about copping more and longer trucks through the Blue Mountains.
Vella argued that it was not a B-double, but look at the photo of it:
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We had to laugh when Vella professed that:
“the exhaust is so clean you could breath it.”
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“We have applied for a special exemption and this requires us to satisfy all the high performance safety standards in place and also to show the State Government evidence of community support for these trucks. “If we get the nod, we could replace the dog-tipper trucks [used at Hartley Quarry to transport coal to Sydney via the Blue Mountains] with Volvo 500 rigid class trucks within four weeks.”
This is Cartage Australia’s current proposal to service the Hartley Quarry1 truck every 17 minutes
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This is a Volvo FM480 too and it carts fuel and meets the Euro standards.A B-double is a B-double.
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Here was the politically correct article on the subject published in the local newspaper a few days later. It reads almost as a scripted media release by the trucking company on prime reading page 5.
A Victorian company hopes to gain the support of highway safety lobby groups for a proposal to operate a fleet of “longer but safer” heavy vehicles through the Blue Mountains.
Heavy vehicles using the Great Western Highway between Victoria Pass and Lapstone Hill are currently restricted to being no more than 19 metres in length.
But Cartage Australia has applied to the State Government for a 12-month special exemption to replace its old dog-tipper trucks servicing Hartley Quarry with new 22-metre Volvo trucks.
The company’s director Wayne Vella gave about 15 people a demonstration of the truck’s features at Goldsmith Place in Katoomba on February 10, which include a quiet and energy efficient ‘Euro 5’ standard engine, rollover protection, quiet disc brakes, GPS satellite navigation, 24-hour driver monitoring and larger load capacity.
He said the Volvo trucks set a new benchmark in road safety, did not use noisy compression brakes and three trucks would be able to carry the same load as four dog-tipper trucks, so the number of truck trips per day would decline significantly.
“Yes, the trucks are just under three metres longer than the current limit for the Blue Mountains, but they are not B-double trucks, they only tow one trailer and are only longer to include an extra set of axles to more evenly spread the load,” he said.
“We have applied for a special exemption and this requires us to satisfy all the high performance safety standards in place and also to show the State Government evidence of community support for these trucks.
“We have introduced these trucks in Victoria and we believe if we don’t take this step here you will end up getting older and older trucks on the road that never get replaced.
“If we get the nod, we could replace the dog-tipper trucks [used at Hartley Quarry to transport coal to Sydney via the Blue Mountains] with Volvo 500 rigid class trucks within four weeks.”
Blackheath Highway Action Group chairperson Michael Paag said he would forward information about the proposal at Cartage Australia’s request to members of all highway action groups and other organisations like the Katoomba Chamber of Commerce and Community.
“Members of the general public who are interested in obtaining information or providing feedback about this proposal can contact me,” he said. (Ed. Contact details withheld for privacy).
Mr Vella said he met with Roads and Maritime Services managers in Katoomba also on February 10 to discuss the proposal and notified Member for Blue Mountains Roza Sage in November when the application for the special permit was lodged.’
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Ed: The message is beware of selective community announcements, as they are selective and not public for reasons to suit the purpose of the protagonist – in this case Cartage Australia’s potentially lucrative contract to truck thousands of tonnes of sand over the Great Western Highway – 1 truck every 17 minutes!
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NRMA on Truck Safety:
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Statistics show that road freight continues to grow 1.5 times as fast as the economy, with estimates that freight is expected to double by 2020. The heavy vehicle industry constantly pushes for increases in length and load.
According to the NRMA, it is important for truck drivers to keep a safe following distance. The NRMA believes any changes should be balanced with improved safety and environmental performance. As such NRMA would like to see heavy vehicles equipped with front, side and rear under-run guards (to ensure light vehicles don’t run underneath the heavy vehicle in the event of a crash) and ABS brakes. ABS brakes allow the driver to steer while braking heavily and minimise stopping distances.
NRMA also believes heavy vehicles should be equipped with tamper-proof, on-board monitoring and speed limiting equipment. Electronic on-board monitors can better observe driving hours and driver behaviour.
NRMA also sees a need for increased enforcement of heavy vehicle speed limits. The RTA has introduced its ‘Three Strikes’ scheme, aimed at penalising heavy vehicles which are repeatedly caught exceeding the speed limit (if three strikes are recorded in a three year period the vehicle’s regisitration is suspended). However, they do have to be caught first. A trailer has a different licence plate number to the prime mover which can make it difficult to identify the vehicle when it is photographed from the rear.
NRMA would like to see all heavy vehicle camera enforcement use front and rear detection.
NRMA also supports opportunities to put more freight onto rail where distances are long and freight is suited to rail transport, but it’s naive to think that rail can transport everything.’
Speeding trucks too dangerous for the Blue Mountains
[Source: ‘Riverluck Mack’ Flickr, ^http://www.flickr.com/photos/quarterdeck/
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But the problem is not so much the performance of one trucking company that is aspiring to deliver best practice performance safety, as Cartage Australia is publicly promising.
The problem is the precedent created that permitting one company with 22m long B-doubles will be the thin policy wedge that will allow less conscientious truckers to ply regional roads through residential and school zones. The problem is one of road safety and across the Blue Mountains, road safety especially when it comes to trucks, has a dismal and worsening road toll record. As the Great Westren Highway is transformed into a dedicated high speed trucking expressway, it becomes more dangerous.
Cartage Australia may indeed be offering the safest truck on any Australian road, but who is monitoring and enforcing best practice driver behaviour 24 hours a day? No one!
Road behaviour is simply not monitored and enforced properly by government. As more and bigger trucks speed along our highways, our highways are becoming dangerous life and death environments which is unacceptable.
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The Habitat Advocate recommends the following standards for the Great Western Highway through the Blue Mountains:
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No B-doubles, only semi-trailers, rigid trucks and smaller to be permitted to use the Great Western Highway between Hartley and Penrith. B-doubles to use the Bells Line of Road route.
NSW Government to suspend all new expressway development, and instead to focus on a Safety First Policy, implementing safety improvements to the current Great Western Highway width between Lawson and Lithgow, noting that the widened sections east of Lawson all but completed or work in progress
Government and freight industry to mandatorily have feasibility study into rail alternatives for any proposal for increasing road line haul – study to be independent and published online with a month of completion
Minimum of four speed cameras and four red light cameras installed on the Great Western Highway between Hartley and Nepean River, all hidden and each rotated during the year. This is to be a permanent arrangement.
Minimum of three speed cameras installed on the Bells Line of Road between Lithgow and Windsor, all hidden and each rotated during the year. This is to be a permanent arrangement.
Quality controls introduced for heavy vehicle drivers with ongoing spot checks by both Police and RTA (RMS) – including, highway monitoring of driver behaviour – tail gating, exhaust brake usage, speeds, log book compliance, vehicle condition, load safety, mobile phone usage, higher professionalism standards, etc.
Time-based pay to replace all trip based remuneration of all heavy vehicle drivers across NSW
Heavy vehicle drivers required to respect and accept variable speed zones across the Great Western Highway, especially through towns and villages and the 40kph zone limits during school morning and afternoon – double demerits for heavy vehicle drivers to reflect the seriousness of heavy vehicles breaching these laws
A mandatory concrete barrier to be installed on the entire length of the Great Western Highway between Lithgow and Penrith that an withstand collision by heavy vehicles to prevent head-on collisions
A maximum 75kph speed limit for all heavy vehicles to be imposed on the Great Western Highway between Penrith and Lithgow
The NSW Government to prepare an economic business case to show the Return on Investment and Pay Back of the Mt Victoria Bypass estimated to cost $1 billion
Prohibit heavy vehicle parking along the highway in Mount Victoria, particularly in the vicinity of the Caltex Service Station. This to be signposted accordingly, monitored by the RTA (RMS) and fines to apply for transgressions
RTA (RMS) to construct one fully accredited heavy vehicle rest area at Mount Boyce on both sides of the highway, and a second at Falconbridge on both sides of the highway to fully comply with the standards set by the National Transport Commission’s Heavy Vehicle Driver Fatigue Legislation, which came into effect on 29 September 2008.
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Postcript:
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Blue Mountains Gazette 20071001:
Victoria Pass Monday, 1 October 2007 Posted By Dean Driscoll, Mt Victoria.
‘Another horrific accident going down the hill at Mt Vic on Sunday. The whole zone from just east of the township to the bottom of the mountain is 60km/hour yet a large percentage of drivers going through Mt Vic seem to struggle to brake to that limit. Surely the area must be regarded as a black spot?
With persistant tail-gaters trying to speed their way through as if it was a freeway, it is time the authories give a serious look at how to manage an out of control situation’.
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No chance!A B-Double crosses the wrong side of the Hume Highway and slams head-on into a car killing all three occupants
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Last Friday, a brick-laden truck crossed a grass embankment, crashed through a guard rail and ended up on the opposite side of the Menangle Bridge on the Hume Highway south of Sydney. It slammed head-on into a car killing the three people inside.
It is only a matter of time before such a tragedy befalls the Great Western Highway in the Blue Mountains as more and more B-Doubles ply this regional route.
Driving along many highways throughout Australia has become deadly as more and bigger trucks travel faster just a metre away on the other side of a white line or two. Not only are there more semi-trailers, but trucking companies are increasingly putting larger capacity B-double trucks on the road, which can weigh over 70 tonnes.
When 70 tonnes hits you it is an instant wall of death.
A speeding semi ploughs into the front yard of a home in Rosanna, in eastern Melbourne on 21st September 2010
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Yet both Liberal and Labor governments at both national and state level are pouring billions of taxpayer dollars to facilitate more road freight on Australian highways, while ignoring the comparative line haul efficiencies and inherent safety of rail freight.
In 1998, the New South Wales Labor Government announced a 12-year $360 million ‘upgrade’ of the Great Western and Mitchell Highways between Penrith (outer Sydney) and Orange in the central west of NSW. In addition, the Federal Liberal-National Coalition Government committed an extra $100 million as part of its Auslink National Network.
The ‘upgrade’ meant transforming the two lane regional highway over the Blue Mountains into a four lane 80kph expressway to facilitate greater and faster trucking – a ‘trucking expressway‘. The then promoted features of this new trucking expressway were to be:
Widening of the highway to a four lane, divided road between Penrith and Katoomba
Widening the highway to mostly three lanes between Katoomba and Mount Victoria (including Blackheath)
Providing additional overtaking lanes along stretches of the highway
Improving pedestrian and traffic facilities at intersections crossing the highway in townships
providing bicycle facilities along the highway
Extensive landscaping and urban design initiatives within Blue Mountains towns and villages.’
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[Source: NSW Roads and Traffic Authority Great Western Highway Upgrade’ brochure, January 2002]
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Well, the widening is certainly carving through Blue Mountains communities and bushland. Pedestrian walkways and crossings are few and far between and the few cycle lanes are within a metre of B-doubles hurtling along at 80kph – those that stick to the speed limit. Who’d be a cyclist on the Great Western Highway now unless one had a death wish?
Destruction in progress yesterday at Boddington Hill, east of Wentworth FallsGreat Western Highway Blue Mountains
(Photo by Editor 20120201, free in public domain, click photo to enlarge)
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In September 2008, the then Federal Labor MP Bob Debus for the Macquarie electorate (covering the Blue Mountains region) committed another $450 million on the Great Western Highway to bypass the village of Mount Victoria and River Lett Hill near Lithgow.
Debus revealed the purpose of the widening on his website:
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“The bypass will halve times between Mt Victoria and Lithgow, reduce accidents by two-thirds, and improve freight transport from the Central West .
The bypass will provide a route on the western escarpment more suited to the operation of heavy vehicles than the current Victoria Pass…”
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[Source: ‘Bob Debus for Macquarie E-news #2‘, Bob Debus MP website, ^http://www.bobdebus.com/newsletter2.html (page since defunct since Debus has resigned from Federal Parliament]
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The joint Labor-Liberal policy focus on developing road freight and ignoring rail freight is short-sighted 20th Century truck thinking. But it is also meaning our regional highways are morphing into bigger and faster freight routes – trucking expressways. Local communities are having to share regional roads with huge trucks.
The trucking industry has allowed itself to become largely contract based where drivers instead of being paid for their time driving are paid on a trip rate. This means that the more trips a driver makes and the faster the delivery times, the more money the drivers earn. This work arrangement only encourages truck drivers to drive faster, often too fast, with disastrous consequences.
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‘It is a statistic that will alarm police and governments dealing with a string of fatal road accidents: almost two thirds of long haul truck drivers interviewed for a national study say their employers pressure them into using unsafe work practices.’
[Source: ‘Truckies pushed into danger zone’, by Andrew West, Sydney Morning Herald, 20100109, p.2]
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Recent fatalities on NSW roads , including the death of an 11-year-old boy, have sparked a renewed call for action on trucks in the Mountains.
Deputy Mayor Mark Greenhill moved a matter of urgency at Blue Mountains City Council (BMCC) meeting 31st January 2012, calling on state and federal government representatives to meet with BMCC to discuss “means and methods by which large trucks can be limited or controlled in terms of behaviour on the Great Western Highway over the Blue Mountains” following several shocking incidents in other areas of the state.
Clr Greenhill: “While the courts have not yet had a chance to determine guilt or otherwise, and I don’t seek to either, recent accidents on NSW roads stand testimony to the awesome power of these trucks,” he said. “In the Campbelltown area a large truck went over the top of a car and killed three people. They had no chance. In coastal NSW a boy was killed while sleeping in his house when a large truck ploughed through it.”
Eleven-year-old boy killed when a B-double crashes through his bedroomAnyone living within 100 metres of a highway has got cause for concern
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Penrith residents are mourning the death of Max MacGregor, the 11-year-old killed when a truck loaded with bananas crashed through his bedroom on the state’s mid-north coast. Max was asleep in the holiday home his family were renting in Urunga when, at 5am on Sunday, a B-double semi collided head-on with a ute before swerving into the holiday home (100 metres from the highway).
Clr Greenhill: “When things go wrong and [trucks] are out of control, they are an uncompromising and deadly weapon. “In that context, people have been killed in significant numbers in the Blue Mountains. It is a scandal to me that governments are not doing more to control tucks on the highway across the Mountains. “This should especially be the case while the highway works are under way.”
Clr Greenhill released BMCC figures in September last year that showed trucks were over-represented in local crash statistics and motorists were three times more likely to die in a collision with one. The statistics showed that from 2005 to 2009, trucks represented nearly a third of all vehicles involving deaths despite being less than a third of vehicles on local roads. Three per cent of all truck crashes were fatal, compared to one per cent of crashes by all other vehicles, the figures showed.
Clr Greenhill said he had reports from local residents about large trucks “even braving the Old Bathurst Road bends”, and said he would like to see vehicles such as B-doubles off local roads for the time being.’
[Source: Letter to the Editor, Blue Mountains Gazette, 20120201, p4]
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The tragic accident involving a 25/26m B-double truck at Menangle last week reaffirms the fact that the Great Western Highway, even after the upgrade to Katoomba is completed, will never be suitable for these massive trucks.
Yet the federal government is funding stage one of a multi-billion dollar highway bypass between Mt Victoria and Lithgow, the main purpose being to allow 25/26/30m B-double trucks carrying up to 77 tonnes to use the highway through the Blue Mountains. Despite overwhelming community disapproval the federal government is pushing ahead with stage one, a purpose built 25/26/30m B-double bypass at River Lett Hill.
The Blackheath Highway Action Group along with many other Blue Mountains Groups successfully lobbied for an independent review to be conducted on the proposed Mount Victoria to Lithgow highway bypass and the future of the highway west of Katoomba. In July 2011 the NSW government appointed Evans and Peck, a firm with local knowledge to conduct this review. the review was completed in November so why is the federal government stalling on its public release?
The federal government refuses to fund a $5 million rail study, a key recommendation of the Central West Transport Needs Study. Rail deserves the same funding, tax incentives and regulatory framework as is currently given to support long haul trucking.
For the sake of safety, local amenity and the long term sustainability it’s time to give rail a fair go and permanently abandon plans to spend billions to turn our highway inot a 25/26/30m B-double freight corridor.’
~ Michael Paag, Chairman, Blackheath Highway Action Group, Blue Mountains
‘A driver has died after a truck caught fire and exploded following a head-on collision between the tabletop truck and B-double took place about 24 kilometres south of Dubbo at Mountain Creek Road about 4am, emergency services said. The Newell Highway in Dubbo is closed in both directions between Mitchell Highway and Tomingley Road. The tabletop truck was carrying food and plastic food containers, and the B-double was carrying fertiliser, Ms O’Connor said.’
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‘Orange truck rollover’
Truck Roll Over at the intersection of Burrendong Way & The Northern Distributor Orange, Central NSW, 20100629
[Source: ‘Orange truck rollover’ by Steve Smith, Rural Fire Service, Canobolas, ^http://www.canobolas.rfs.nsw.gov.au/dsp_content.cfm?cat_id=131107]
‘One woman was killed and five people were injured in two accidents involving B-double trucks. Engineers were called to the scene of a dramatic accident on the Gateway Motorway at Boondall in Brisbane about midday yesterday, when a B-double truck exploded after it and a car collided. The intensity of the explosion and subsequent fire was so severe that parts of the truck fused together, raising concerns about damage to the road and overpass bridge underneath, a police spokeswoman said.
(Meanwhile) on the Bruce Highway near Rockhampton, a 19-year-old woman died and four people were injured when a car and a B-double truck collided. Police said the station wagon tried to turn into the southbound lanes of the Bruce Highway at Marmor just before 8pm on Friday when the car and truck, which was travelling in the northbound lane, collided.
The 19-year-old driver was killed, while her three female passengers, two aged 19 and one aged 18, were taken to Rockhampton hospital. The three are in a stable condition.The 65-year-old driver of the B-double was taken to hospital for precautionary treatment and has been released.
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‘Three trucks involved in two separate highway collisions’
A 50-year old man was taken to Dubbo Base Hospital with serious injuries after a collision between a B-double truck and a utility vehicle, occurred about 1.15pm on the Newell Highway just south of Gilgandra.
Earlier in the day, in a separate accident, two trucks collided 25 km outside of Dubbo on the Golden Highway. A UD truck crashed into the back of a Mitsubishi Canter turning right at the Barbigal Road turn off to Wongarbon about 11.40am yesterday.
At the scene, Ballimore RFS deputy captain Col Buckler said the Golden Highway was not currently built for trucks and “most definitively” needed upgrading.
“This is the official B-double road to Newcastle (and) the roads need to be built to carry trucks,” Mr Buckler said. “It’s time they spent money to make it safer because of the amount of trucks that use it.”
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‘Fatal crash between car and truck causes explosion, closes Pacific Highway’
AT least one person has been killed in the fiery collision between a car and a B-double truck at Warrell Creek, about 10km south of Macksville, just before 4am today.
“The B-doubles can’t pass using the diversion as the rail overpass is not suitable for their weight,” a spokesman for the Roads and Traffic Authority told AAP.
The truck involved in the crash was carrying chemicals and exploded in flames on impact, but Fire and Rescue NSW extinguished the blaze. One person from the car has been confirmed dead, but police say it’s not clear how many people were in the car when it crashed.
‘A Canberra man was lucky to escape without serious injury after the B-Double truck he was driving along the Boorowa Rd overturned at 6.15am on Wednesday morning. The 42 year old man lost control of the vehicle 2km south out of town and ran off the road, before the entire truck overturned and spilled out over both lanes of the road.
The overturned truck was carrying furniture and concrete slabs and left more than a dozen slabs scattered over the road. Local resident Russell Denning said he heard a ‘monstrous bang’ when the truck crashed on the road near his home.
Senior Constable John Newton said a lack of attention from the driver appears to be the cause of the accident but police are still investigating.
“At this stage it appears the driver was distracted but there are still final enquiries to be completed,” he said. “My understanding is the driver will receive an infringement for negligent driving.”
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.
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!
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).
‘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.‘.(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]
Yet another Dangerous Trucking Menace along the Great Western Highway – last week
Source: Blackheath Highway Action Group
‘The Blackheath Highway Action group was formed in 2008 to fight a proposal to turn the Great Western Highway
into a 4 lane high productivity freight vehicle (25/26/30m B-doubles) route across the Blue Mountains.
Website: ^http://www.bag.asn.au
Lawson
Neo-Lawson
Shops bulldozed
Village Character urban lobotomised
Bullaburra: On Trucking Death Row
Semi-trailer cowboy carrying sand and speeding, 4km west of Mount Tomah, June 2012
B-Double Rollover on the Bells Line of Road (Nov 2010)
“West Sector Brigades are frequently called to accidents on the Bells Line of Road and Darling Causeway”.
[Source: Rural Fire Service, ^http://www.bluemountains.rfs.nsw.gov.au/dsp_content.cfm?cat_id=129643]
Lost load … the scene at Chullora where a refrigerated pantech fell from a truck
[Source: Picture: Bill Hearne, The Daily Telegraph]
The wreckage on the F3 after the fatal crash
A couple and baby killed
[Photo: Matt Black Productions]
Motorway Widening Cancer
Road Widening is a Chicken and Egg causality dilemma
– widen it and they shall come and then congest it, so widen it again…
