New road-rail rules

Press, 5 October 1977, Page 5

New road-rail rules

PA Wellington Details of regulations governing road-rail competition since the extension of the 40-mile rail restriction to 150 kilometres, which came into force on Saturday, have been announced by the Minister of Transport (Mr McLachlan). All goods which previously had to be carried by rail if there was an available route of between 64 and 150 kilometres of open Government railway, are freed for carriage by road transport. As with the 40-mile limit, the 150 kilometres will be measured from the railway station nearest to the point goods are picked up, to the railway station nearest to the point the goods are set down. Mr McLachlan said that; under the previous limit, goods service carriers were

not permitted to cross their licensing district boundary ' unless they had a specific | exemption granted by the licensing authority. “Operators will now be able to apply for an extension to their licences to enter other licensing districts and, provided the application is in order, the extension will be granted automatically,” he said. A carrier could apply only once for this automatic extension, and the extension did not apply to commodities already exempted from the 150-kilometre limit such as livestock, new furniture, and fresh fruit and vegetables. No additional automatic rights would apply in the case of these commodities. Under the new regulations, goods might be picked up or set down in additional districts but might not be both picked up and

r set down in additional dist tricts. Backloading would be : permitted but only when the s carrier was returning to the district or districts specified 3 on his licence at present. Mr McLachlan urged all 3 carriers to ensure that appli- - cations for licence exten- - sions were correctly com- - piled, to speed up processing - of applications. The Minister also said r that the new limit would be • rigorously enforced. t “I am aware of - speculation that there could Ibe attempts to establish t linked-up services between, - say, Auckland-Hamilton-Na-I pier or Auckland-Hamilton- - Rotorua to circumvent the i new limit and enable an - operator to carry goods well in excess of the 150 kilo--1 metres. I warn those con- ;; templating such illegal praciltices that these will be dealt II with severely,” Mr McLachii lan said.