Transport companies given fine-free time as AI powers inner-west truck ban
Sensor Dynamics founder Nick Parker said the technology, which has been trialled over the past 18 months, was even more advanced than that used on regional highways in NSW or around Sydney’s Botanical Harbour.
He said he was shocked by the size and frequency of heavy vehicles using suburban streets during a trial of the cameras in Melbourne’s inner west. “You have nice residential streets with semitrailers coming down,” he said. “It’s really not good at all.”
Information on trucks detected by AI-powered cameras will be accessed by the National Heavy Vehicle Regulator.
Images captured by the cameras will be analyzed by roadside AI and transmitted to an Equinix data center in Melbourne, where the National Heavy Vehicle Regulator, the body responsible for regulating and licensing all vehicles exceeding 4.5 tonnes in mass, will access them via a secure portal.
Information from the cameras will not be uploaded to the cloud or shared with offshore databases, Parker said.
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While the $10.2 billion tunnel project is a headline-grabbing change to Melbourne’s transport industry and roads in the western suburbs, Horne said the government’s decision to lease 29 hectares from the former Melbourne Markets site on Footscray Road for a truck diversion and container storage facility would also reduce the driving time trucks spend bringing empty containers back to the port.
Most of the container trucks currently plying the inner west are filled with empty cargo.
Horne said the proliferation of 26-metre high-performance freight vehicles (HPFVs) on Melbourne’s roads and the disruption to global shipping and logistics caused by the pandemic, as well as the way goods are stored, had significantly changed the logistics of Melbourne’s freight mission from what was envisaged when the tunnel project was first proposed. There was only one HPFV registered in Victoria in 2014; today that number was more than 5,700.
HPFVs weighing more than 68.5 tonnes are too heavy to use the West Gate Bridge.
Horne said Melbourne’s population growth was putting pressure on the city’s storage capacity, with an estimated 4.5 square meters of additional storage space required for each new resident.
“You can see that from the volumes coming through the port,” he said. “Last year was their biggest year with 3.2 million TEUs (20 foot equivalent units) and that trend continues to grow.
Victoria Ports and Shipping Minister Melissa Horne.Credit: Joe Armao
“This is a symptom not only of our growing city, but also of the disruption that is occurring in the supply chain. This is not a Victorian phenomenon. It is a global phenomenon.”
The idea of a second trunk road over the Maribyrnong River and dedicated truck routes to the port was first proposed by the East-West Link Needs Assessment group chaired by Sir Rod Eddington in 2008. The proposal predicted that daily truck movements in and out of the port would more than double or triple from 9,000 to between 18,500 and 29,500 by 2035.
The changing nature of Melbourne’s truck fleet towards much larger vehicles that can hold more containers means the number of daily truck movements remains largely unchanged, although the amount of freight coming into the city is steadily increasing.
Port of Melbourne, to be released soon Port Development Strategy Over the next 30 years, truck traffic to and from the docks is predicted to increase by 2 to 3 percent per year. The government’s latest release Victoria Transport Plan It predicts that the shipping business will grow faster than the city’s population and will more than double between 2020-21 and 2050-51.
Sir Rod Eddington in 2020. He says the most important recommendations he made for Melbourne’s transport system in 2008 have been implemented.Credit: Jason South
Despite years of political disagreement over the project, Eddington said the West Gate Tunnel provides both east-west road transit and key elements of the truck action plan recommended in his report.
Add in the Metro Tunnel opening this month, the Regional Rail Link built a decade ago and the electrification of the Sunbury rail line, and the opening of the West Gate Tunnel makes for a top five eye-opening recommendation Investing in Transportation The report was carried out.
Eddington said eventually the final piece of the east-west road project – a tunnel connecting the City Link and the Eastern Motorway – should be built to meet the pressure of the Domain and Burnley tunnels.
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“If you took the Burnley and Domain tunnels out of Melbourne’s infrastructure tomorrow, the city would be gridlocked,” he said. “The bottom line is that you should do in the north of the city what we’ve done in the south. This will significantly improve liveability because it takes traffic away from key parts of metropolitan Melbourne and adds much more certainty to travel times.”
Asked if he agreed, Horne said the picture would become clearer over the next five years when the North-East Link road project is completed, the Beveridge Intermodal Freight Terminal is built north of Melbourne and more rail capacity is installed at the port.
“Future governments will ask, ‘What else do we need to do to move things on the network?’ “They will be able to ask,” he said. “Unless we do this efficiently and increase productivity, the city will grind to a halt.
