The Survey of Motor Vehicle Use (SMVU) conducted by the Australian Bureau of Statistics is the primary data source for road freight task estimates. But its definition of interstate road freight is limited to freight carried by trucks registered in other states on a state's roads. Included in this definition is freight carried mostly within, for example New South Wales (NSW), by trucks registered in Victoria. Excluded from this definition is that portion of interstate tonne-kilometres performed by NSW trucks within NSW as they head to, for example Victoria. On both counts, the SMVU task estimates of interstate freight for NSW do not measure what road authorities wish measured which is interstate freight carried by all trucks on a state's roads. This paper derives estimates of this concept of interstate freight and presents a methodology for continually updating the estimates from future SMVU. The estimation of interstate road freight tasks within States in this paper is based on origin destination matrices. The study also presents a time-series analysis of interstate road freight task on State roads between 1971 and 2004. (a) For the covering entry of this conference, please see ITRD abstract no. E214666.
Abstract