Image courtesy of FreightLink.
In a
submission to the National Transport Commission (NTC), the Australasian Railway Association (ARA) has lodged the rail industry’s concerns at the NTC’s calls to lower registration charges for larger trucks.
In the NTC’s Consultation Paper; Heavy Vehicle Charges Issues, the NTC has provided several options for Federal and State Governments to reduce larger truck registration fees by between $1,300 and $8,700 annually.
Bryan Nye, ARA CEO, said the policy to provide even greater subsidies for big trucks will increase the size and numbers of trucks on our road to the detriment of the rail freight industry and safety of those on our roads.
“The NTC proposal is essentially a subsidy to encourage more trucks on our roads,” he said.
“If the NTC proposal is given the green light, Australians will be sharing their roads with more and more large trucks.”
Mr Nye said rail freight is nine times safer and three to four times more energy efficient than road freight.
“The NTC’s push to encourage more freight onto our roads will increase the risk of fatal and serious injury collisions when putting more freight onto our rail network is the safer option,” continued Mr Nye.
“Moving the same freight on rail would reduce the risk of road accidents nine fold.”
The rationale put forward by the NTC for registration reductions is that current registration charges encourage the use of smaller, less economically efficient trucks.
However, the NTC Paper goes on to state that there is no evidence that registration charges encourage the use of smaller trucks.
“Policies, subsidies and exemptions provided to road freight such as this severely restrict rail’s ability to compete in the freight market,” continued Mr Nye.
“If rail is to compete with road in the freight space, we need a level playing field where policies are driven by a holistic view of the transport market,” concluded Mr Nye.