I disagree with that assessment. The freight companies don't get the benefit of shorter routes, what they get is competition forcing prices down on those routes because costs have dropped. The economic benefits aren't to the freight companies, it is a wider economic benefit of cheaper freight and more efficient transfer of freight that is spread across many companies and individuals. Hence why it doesn't make sense for freight companies to pay for, but does make sense for a government to invest in.

[–] TagMeInSkipIGotThis 2 points 2 weeks ago (1 children)

Well, given the road freight companies pay a fraction of the true cost of the wear and tear they cause on the roads, and the elevated cost of building roads that can safely cope with how large National let trucks get in 2014, they do get benefits that other forms of transport don't. But yeah if the point is to unlock regional economic gains then it should be paid for as a public service.

[–] Dave 1 points 2 weeks ago* (last edited 2 weeks ago) (1 children)

The road wear and tear problem seems to be solvable through RUC. You'd probably destroy the transport system doing it overnight. Perhaps it would be a good start to calculate accurate costs and set the RUC rates at those actual cost rates, then apply a discount to get close to current rates. This makes it more visible, and over time you can reduce the discount while also working on building alternate infrastructure.

[–] TagMeInSkipIGotThis 2 points 2 weeks ago (1 children)

Personally i'd go back to the future a bit and look at reverting the 2014 changes to reduce weight and thus damage. I would also start providing a similar amount of subsidy to coastal shipping as road freight gets and build the coastal network back up. I'm a huge fan of rail freight, and would like to see it used more as well but most of the existing infrastructure around that is ok for now.

With a strong coastal and rail freight networks we can then start putting restrictions on road freight distances again - with a carve out for time critical / refrigerated going to either domestic market or air freight routes.

If we can reduce the speed & weight of trucks, plus the amount of them and the distance travelled then in theory (to a pleb) our roads aren't as expensive to build, and don't suffer as much pot-hole damage so the maintenance costs are reduced. For mine, the National Party's all in on road just sets us up for huge ongoing cost maintaining ever bigger and more expensive roads, with a huge emissions cost compounding the whole problem.

[–] Dave 1 points 2 weeks ago* (last edited 2 weeks ago) (1 children)

Personally i’d go back to the future a bit and look at reverting the 2014 changes to reduce weight and thus damage.

There's a really key point here. Heavier trucks cause more damage, but the exponential increase is based on axle weight. If you spread the load out over more axles (keeping the axle weights the same as a smaller truck), then you no longer get the exponential increase in damage and are now in additive damage. Now obviously these trucks cause more damage than one truck (the same per axle, but more axles), but they also move the freight with a smaller number of trucks since each is carrying more.

There are other factors at play too (like the heavier trucks do need roads (bridges) capable of carrying all that weight), but I don't think allowing the larger freight trucks is generally as big of a cause of massive damage as it gets blamed for. I think it's reduced freight costs (one driver can carry more) which increases demand, and there are also other reasons I suspect freight has increased a lot, causing more road damage.

I also want to add that an under 3,500kg vehicle with two axles pays $76 per 1000km. Two axles up to 6,000kg pays $80, so you can already see something isn't right (shouldn't they be paying almost twice as much at a minimum, but as it's double the weight across the same number of axles then 4 times as much). When you get up to larger vehicles things get super complicated and I'm out of my league 😆

Another thing here is weather. Weather causes a lot of road damage, more in some parts of the country than others. I'd guess it's probably possible to estimate what proportion of road damage is caused by weather, if you had access to the right stats. Is it fair to spread this out across RUC bands by weight (heavier vehicles pay for more of the weather damage) or should it be per vehicle? I'm just rambling now, but my point is it's probably not easy to put an exact number on how much of a subsidy trucks get, since a lot of the spread (like who pays for weather damage) is arbitrary. I think it's probably fair to say heavier vehicles are getting more use of the road and so perhaps it's ok for them to pay a larger share of the weather, etc, costs. Which leads me to your next point.

I would also start providing a similar amount of subsidy to coastal shipping as road freight gets and build the coastal network back up. I’m a huge fan of rail freight, and would like to see it used more as well but most of the existing infrastructure around that is ok for now.

A large amount of freight is between main centres. Imagine if you could throw a rail hub near Auckland and one near Wellington and then use container trucks to get things where they need to go. Easy loading and unloading of trains, no traffic, no dealing with driver rest breaks etc making stuff late because all the trips would be short and easy to schedule a different driver for. If you put some thought into it you could have it working really well. You could work you way to putting heavy electric capability into the line.

Coastal shipping is a great option too, and we already have all the infrastructure for it.

If we can reduce the speed & weight of trucks, plus the amount of them and the distance travelled then in theory (to a pleb) our roads aren’t as expensive to build, and don’t suffer as much pot-hole damage so the maintenance costs are reduced.

I think reducing the amount of freight going by road is the important bit here. It does cost more to build roads that can take the heavier trucks, but I don't think we will stop building such roads even if we reduced the weights allowed.

All in all, this is a long rambly comment to say, other than some nit picky bits, I agree with you and it would be great if you could get this going for us thanks 😋

[–] TagMeInSkipIGotThis 2 points 2 weeks ago (1 children)

There's lots of interesting stuff in your reply, and I don't have a lot to add, but I thought maybe context around my interest in coastal shipping.

I'd never really given it much thought at all, but coincidentally in 2 months i'd been to the maritime museum in Auckland which has models of all sorts of coastal ships that used to ply their trade around New Zealand which made me interested in the subject.

Then I read a post somewhere talking about how changes had been made around the late 80s early 90s designed to crush NZs maritime union power that would supposedly have replaced our coastal shipping effort with international carriers bringing their large container ships down here and then doing pickups & dropoffs as they bounced around the various ports. Apparently that never really happened, or at least didn't take off much so the net result was that we killed most of our coastal shipping and were left with road and rail.

In & of itself, road and rail probably seem like a good option because we had ferries linking both networks and around the time those changes had been made was a lot closer to the heydey of NZ Rail. Of course in hindsight we can see that the neo-liberal reforms that sold off the railways led to massive under-investment in the rail network, lines closing, being unmaintained, worsening rolling stock and in the end we went from 3 modes of freight transport to 1.

But what really made me think again about coastal shipping was the impacts of Cyclone Gabrielle and the likelihood that they will happen again, sooner than we thought 20-30 years ago, and more often thereafter. Gabrielle (briefly) entirely cut off the northern half of Hawke's Bay over land in all directions, North, West & South. Even when things were opened it was initially via a single road route to the south and took a long time to open the crucial Napier-Taupo link and even longer the Napier-Gisborne.

Smaller settlements around Tairāwhiti were cut off even worse as their roads & bridges between each other meant towns were isolated from each other as well. In the end because the road between Napier & Wairoa was so damaged a temporary shipping link was made from Gisborne port to Napier port.

So long as port facilities survive then the most resilient transport for freight & aid for coastal provinces after a cyclone will be coastal shipping. If we have a thriving network then its possible we don't notice the impact anywhere near as much as we might.

[–] Dave 1 points 2 weeks ago

I didn't realise the history! That's really important context. I'm a big fan of coastal shipping because it reduces transport emissions, but the resilience factor is helpful too!