Newsletter

Dear HVTT Forum subscriber, The opening paragraph of Jonathan Regehr’s June newsletter made me think again of the desperate situation in which we find ourselves here in South Africa (and many other Developing nations) regarding road fatalities and serious injuries in general and, more specifically, for the HVTT community, such statistics involving heavy vehicles. The statistics are frightening and yet the majority of the population has become accustomed to the situation except for brief periods when a serious crash with a relatively high number of fatalities and serious injuries is publicised in the media. Shortly after receiving Jonathan’s newsletter at the end of June, a crash involving a heavy vehicle and a minibus taxi occurred on the night of 2 July on a national highway in the Eastern Cape province resulting in 15 fatalities, including a two-year-old child and a two-month-old baby. It is alleged that the driver hit a... Read More

Dear HVTT subscriber, I start this month’s newsletter on a somber note. On June 16, 2023, a crash between a tractor-semitrailer and a 25-passenger bus claimed the lives of 16 people. The crash occurred at an at-grade intersection of the Trans Canada Highway and a two-lane undivided rural road, west of Winnipeg, Manitoba. As the tragic details of the crash emerge, may we as a community of professionals involved in heavy vehicle transport be reminded to prioritize safety in all we do. *** Inspired by Karel Kural’s approach to last month’s newsletter, which featured developments from across Europe, this month’s newsletter highlights input provided by a few truck-enthused researchers in Canada—from east to west. New Brunswick: Dr. Julien Lépine, Université Laval and the HVTT Forum’s current Secretary, noted that province’s recent involvement in a pilot project that allows 60.5-ft (18.4-m) semi-trailers as part of a tractor semi-trailer combination, rather than the conventional 53-ft... Read More

Dear HVTT Forum members, This month, I would like to offer an exciting newsletter, reporting on the positive developments from Europe. Thanks to Franziska Schmidt (FRA), Chris de Saxe (UK), and Thomas Asp (SWE) I compiled very interesting  newsletter from various parts of Europe where you can read about the continuous progress on implementation High-Capacity Vehicles in the Netherlands, Sweden, Denmark, France, Spain, and United Kingdom. Starting from the north, the Swedish government has recently decided to permit the use of 34.5-meter-long vehicle combinations within the country. However, it should be noted that comprehensive regulations for both infrastructure and vehicles are still being developed and will not be finalized until the end of this year. Consequently, the deployment of these vehicles on the roads will not take place before the completion of the regulations. Under this new policy, approximately 4000 kilometers of state roads will be opened for these longer vehicle combinations.... Read More

Dear members of the HVTT community, It feels almost unreal. All traces of the previously so rigorous Chinese Covid regime are completely gone. Society is back to normal. It will take years until we know which policies around the world were more efficient in combating the pandemic outbreak. One serious effect of the Chinese strict control was that very few foreigners visited China in the past 3,5 years. The media reporting in the West focused on negative issues, which left many with the impression that China was standing still or even stagnating. Nothing could be farther from the truth. Although the economy took a severe beating last year, in the progress has continued unabated. Innovation, new regulations, modification of regulations, distorting business models and so on have all developed uninterrupted. It is sometimes said that the speed of one year in China corresponds to three years in the West. If... Read More

Dear HVTT Forum Newsletter subscribers, We are pleased to bring you news about the upcoming HVTT17/ICWIM9 Joint Symposium in Brisbane! It promises to be a beautiful and rich program with more than 100 submitted papers. For people from outside Australia who want to participate in the symposium, now is the time to make preparations for travel and accommodation. The symposium starts on Monday 6 November and lasts until Friday 10 November. Detailed information can be found on our website www.hvttforum.org/hvtt17-icwim9/, for example suggested hotels, about ticket prices or if you need an official invitation. The organizing committee in Australia is also hard at work creating its own website. Tickets can be purchased via this symposium website. As soon as it is ready, we will inform you about it via our website. The deadline for submitting the full papers is March 31. For those who need more time, the deadline has... Read More

With freezing cold in North America and scorching heat in South America, why not travel to Central America! Central America acts as a major connector for cargo ships travelling from Asia on their way to Europe and to the Eastern USA. The Panama Canal provides a direct thruway particularly to container vessels, with the largest NeoPanamax vessel to cross in 2022 of 16,285 TEU (TEU is the unit of a 20-foot container). With the continuous increase in international trade, the idea of a dry canal (in Spanish “canal seco”) as an alternative to the Panama Canal has been developing from concept to potential reality in Central American countries since the late 90s. A canal seco usually involves the setting of a high-capacity rail connection between two ports, or a highway corridor. It is politically and economically attractive, because in comparison, it is faster to build than to construct a transoceanic... Read More

Dear HVTT Forum members, I’m pleased to be writing the (belated) November 2022 edition of the HVTT Forum newsletter. A few things have diverted my efforts from getting the newsletter out during November, none more so than the work which is now well underway for our joint HVTT17/ICWIM9 conference. I’ll have more to say about that later in this newsletter. I’m going to go straight to the subject of weather. While it is customary to end HVTT Forum newsletters on this topic, weather events during 2022 have directly impacted on all things transport across Australia. The resilience of Australia’s road transport industry has again been on display during 2022, with severe weather and flooding have impacted the operation of road and rail transport, and supply chains more generally. Flooding in regional areas across the Australian states of New South Wales and Victoria forced heavy vehicle operations to take long detours... Read More

Dear HVTT Forum subscriber, In South Africa, horrific truck crashes have reached the media headlines on an all too frequent basis during the past few months. In September, a crash in KwaZulu-Natal involving a truck and an LDV resulted in 21 fatalities including 19 children. One of the contributing factors, I believe, is the massive increase in the price of coal since February as a result of the war in the Ukraine, together with the inability of Transnet, the South African government-owned rail, port and pipeline company, to cope with the increase in the demand for the export of coal. This has led to a significant increase in truck volumes (in some cases as much as 40% or between 400 and 500 trucks per day, both directions on a given route) on the major highways and provincial roads to the ports of Maputo (in Mozambique), Richards Bay and Durban. It... Read More

Dear HVTT subscriber, In November 2023, the HVTT Forum will join forces with the International Society for Weigh-in-Motion (ISWIM) to produce a joint international scientific conference under the theme: Technology Convergence 2023 – Setting the wheels in motion – Reimagining the future of heavy vehicles, roads and freight. As a member of both sponsoring organizations, I am particularly pleased to see this initiative come to fruition. To help promote the event and considering the upcoming deadline for abstract submissions (October 31, 2022), I decided to share some reflections on this theme in this month’s newsletter. Reimagining truck size and weight policy with systems thinking I spent much of the early part of my research career thinking about truck size and weight policy. In that time, I became fascinated with some rather thorny policy questions: Can we design more productive trucks that impose less wear on pavements and bridges than existing trucks? What happens when a truck... Read More

Dear HVTT Forum subscriber, I hope this newsletter from Europe finds you in a good shape no matter you are currently enjoying peak of the summer or winter period. For this newsletter I selected two topics being the various approaches to deploy A-double combinations in Europe and continuous rise of electrification in the road freight transport. As you may remember from some of the previous newsletters, I was updating you over the progressing developments to pilot of A-double combination (tractor with two semitrailers coupled by a dolly) on dedicated corridor between cities of Rotterdam and Venlo, being lead logistic hubs,  in the Netherlands. Sadly, in May the Dutch Ministry of the of Infrastructure and Water management has decided to put the pilot on hold without further support or investments. It is mainly due to prevailing opinion at the Ministry that implementation of A-Double represents considerable safety risks for the road... Read More