Heavy Vehicle Services – Achievements and Looking Ahead

Heading into 2020, and a new decade at that, provides us with a good opportunity to look back at the significant changes and achievements we’ve seen over the last 12 months.

Technology has been front and centre of our changes with the introduction of Body Cameras for our Compliance Team and the use of weigh in motion scales and a Vehicle Inspection Station (or Shaker) at our roadblocks. When used collectively, this equipment helps make the road block inspection process quicker and more efficient, allowing compliant drivers to get back on the road faster.

In 2019, Main Roads stopped 16,004 vehicles during general patrols on the State road network, and conducted six major 24- 72 hour roadblocks throughout WA, with 77 per cent of the vehicles inspected at these roadblocks found to be compliant.

Transport Inspectors were on the road 24/7 during the last 12 months, spending more than half their time (56 per cent) in regional WA.

Enforcement of the Chain of Responsibility (CoR) Legislation continued in 2019, with Main Roads completing 48 CoR prosecutions across the industry, incurring more than $180,000 of infringements. Sixty-two per cent of these were issued to someone other than the driver.

The Heavy Vehicle Operational Team has been working hard to deliver excellent customer service - 29,566 permits were issued by the Permits and Notices team while the Help Desk took more than 26,270 customer calls. The Traffic Escort team were also highly sought after, starting the year with an increased demand for their services and ending with 1,215 escorts across WA.

Meanwhile our Access Team spent significant time working with the agricultural and transport industries to address ‘first and last mile’ access issues to and from the farm gate, specifically during grain harvest season. The Team completed onsite assessments for every road endorsed under a Harvest Mass Management Scheme (HMMS) Road List in the 2018/19 harvest, to determine suitability for adding them to the relevant RAV Network on a permanent basis. In all, they completed over 1,050 onsite assessments from Northampton in the north down to Esperance in the South, meeting our commitment to have the onsite assessments completed prior to this year’s harvest. As part of the process, 915 roads have been approved for the requested level of RAV access thereby negating the need for the special RAV access arrangements to continue under HMMS. This change provides farmers and transport operators with RAV access which will ensure that grain is transported from the paddock to the grain receiver in the most efficient way possible, providing productivity benefits and assisting the agricultural industry to keep costs down in an internationally competitive market. It also reduces the number of heavy vehicle trips required for the specific transport task, which consequently reduces carbon emissions, traffic congestion, heavy vehicle noise, pavement wear and tear, and the risk of incident and, it means less vehicles travelling through country towns, providing greater community amenity. Going forward, Heavy Vehicle Services looks forward to a year where we continue to work with our customers ensuring we understand your needs, while ensuring positive road safety and road infrastructure sustainability outcomes. For further information on who we are and what we do, please call the Heavy Vehicle Helpdesk on 138 486 or visit www.mainroads.wa.gov.au