Attendees at HVIA’s mid-year Member Forums received key updates on coming changes to the Heavy Vehicle National Law (HVNL) from Aaron De Rozario, Executive Leader of Regulatory Reform at the National Transport Commission.
At events held in Victoria and Western Australia in August, Aaron gave updates and preliminary details on key issues impacting members, principally the coming changes to the HVNL’s mass and dimension limits, and some possible implementation options and requirements for vehicles. The changes include:
> General Mass Limits (GML) allowed for heavy vehicles will be increased to match the current Concession Mass Limits (CML); and
> ‘General Access’ height limit will be increased from 4.3 m to 4.6 m and vehicle length from 19 m to 20 m, pending confirmation of further technical analysis and appropriate controls.
The proposed changes are set to deliver wide-ranging productivity benefits to the industry across all participating HVNL states and will unlock advantages that are presently only available through additional regulatory schemes including the National Heavy Vehicle Accreditation Scheme (NHVAS) and the Performance Based Standards (PBS) scheme.
HVIA notes that the detail of the proposed changes are not yet final and may still be subject to change.
Nonetheless, the updates generated more discussion and questions from members than any other topic on the meeting agenda, and will be unpacked in further detail in Talk the Torque newsletter articles in the coming weeks.
Reach out to Adam Ritzinger, HVIA’s Chief Technical Officer, at a.ritzinger@hvia.asn.au, for more information.