The West Cannot Keep on Trucking

In an analytical essay examine how the author has used language to persuade and position the audience

The west cannot keep on trucking

The Age May 25, 2013

Suzy Freeman-Greene

Trucks travel along Francis St Yarraville. Photo: Craig Abraham

It's truck-a-rama in the inner west. You love the sound of air brakes in the morning? Come on down. You think Melbourne's a city of equal opportunity? Come see the trucks banked up in Footscray like so many grinding, sighing dragons, puffing diesel fumes metres from someone's home.

You think I'm exaggerating? Check out the video posted on YouTube by a mother at Kingsville Primary School. It's edited highlights of trucks rumbling past the gate one morning, engines wheezing as kids stroll by in the shadow of containers.

But we live in a democracy, right, and if people speak long and loud enough about the health impact, the unfairness, the environmental harm, eventually governments will act.

Well, I moved to the inner west 19 years ago and trucks were a big problem then. They're an even bigger problem now - and they're getting bigger - and what has the state government done? Ditched a plan for off-ramps linking the West Gate freeway to the port, which would have removed loads of trucks from inner western streets.

It will instead build the east-west toll road link - eastern part first, of course, where the marginal seats are. West-dwellers face up to a decade of truck-clogged streets before their section of the toll road emerges.

My initiation into truck-a-rama happened soon after I'd gone west. I was turning right, on a three-lane road. So was the semi-trailer in a queue of trucks on my left. Foolishly, I began to accelerate before the truck had fully turned. Its rear end clipped my car, propelling it towards the median strip. As the truck trundled on, I managed to correct the wheel and avoid a head-on. But I still remember that feeling of being flicked aside like a flea on an elephant. It was my fault. But what did I know about driving amid hordes of trucks? I was from the eastern suburbs.

In the years since, I've grown familiar with the dusty, metallic tang of diesel fumes. I've felt the verandah tremble as trucks went by, and seen them pick off the casuarinas finally planted in our street after years of lobbying. I've stood in the playground at my daughter's creche, listening to air brakes and thinking about kids' lungs. I had options, luckily, and moved nearer the sea.

I know. I know. We'd be stuffed without trucks, we need the stuff they deliver: cheap lounge suites, unseasonal bananas, petrol, toys. But why should the people of Melbourne's west - many of whom can't afford to move - be treated so dismissively? More than 20,000 trucks go through the City of Maribyrnong each day. Truck traffic is forecast to double by 2025. And what happened to rail freight? Why aren't we moving more stuff by train? We don't yet know what caused last week's crash on the Bolte Bridge, in which a truck driver was badly hurt. But police think a car clipped the side of his truck as it merged lanes. Still, instead of the crash prompting questions about our over-reliance on roads, the government used it to bolster the case for the east-west link.

Part of the problem, says academic and rail consultant Dr Bill Russell, is the lack of a lobby group advocating on behalf of rail freight, in contrast to the many powerful voices championing better roads.

Russell says the number of trucks on roads is increasing while rail's share of freight falls. ''When [Jeff] Kennett privatised the rail freight system in Victoria it was taken over by Pacific National freight,'' he says. ''They proceeded to asset strip and destaff it. A lot of rail trucks were sold for scrap …'' He says that as a result of the privatisation, we don't have a strong and committed rail freight operator fighting for new markets.

Rail freight is safer and cleaner. We need more investment in it, argues Russell, and a dedicated state rail freight authority. It would, for instance, take only ''about 15 modern trains to replace every semi-trailer on the Hume Highway''.

Instead, we're getting huge new trucks on key roads: the B-double (30-metres, on freeways and toll roads) and the B-triple (36.5-metres, on major highways). Drivers must now ponder the best way to co-exist with these freight snakes.

Maribyrnong council has stopped trucks going up smaller streets like the one I once lived in. And this week it called for a truck curfew during school crossing times on Somerville Road, where Kingsville and another school, St Augustine's, are located. (The matter now rests with VicRoads.)

On Thursday, I visited the Kingsville Primary pedestrian crossing. In 10 minutes before school began, I counted 34 trucks rattling down this narrow road. But I should chillax, yes? Because Denis Napthine is governing for all Victorians, including those in safe Labor seats.

Suzy Freeman-Greene is a senior writer at The Age

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