Time is flying by – and from what we hear, many of us bussies are now flying around Australia and abroad. It is great to see a return to face to face engagement.

QBIC is kicking off industry’s first en masse conference at the Sofitel Brisbane April 8 and 9. Full details on their “Driving a Cleaner Future” conference is available on the QBIC website. An Australian and international interactive calendar of ‘what’s on’ is loaded on the BIC’s moving people website. Mark you diaries!
In this update, find out what people really want; the results are in on our industry survey on ZEBs. Find out more on the latest tech specs to come out of TfNSW and Commonwealth ADRs and the government plan to increase the RUC and registration charges.

On 16 Feb 2022, the BIC asked our operator and supplier members to “Have your Say on Zero”. The survey received more than 60 responses (about 45% of our members have provided a response thus far).

The survey asked for feedback on a proposed suite of technical advisories and operator guidelines that would see a national set of minimum standards on ZEBs; standards relating to vehicle specification, maintenance, safety management and infrastructure/integration. 
All respondents were enthusiastic for the BIC to develop national guidelines in those 4 key areas. The highest and immediate concerns, from both operators and suppliers, was the need for a vehicle specification standard. This was followed by vehicle maintenance guidelines and safety management systems. 

There were a number of shared concerns across the majority of respondents and can be summarised as follows:

• Minimum qualifications and certified training required for driving the bus, service and maintenance 
• Safety instructions and care when other bus componentry maintenance is undertaken (such as doors,
  tyres and air-con).
• Standardisation of charging infrastructure and minimum qualifications for maintaining charging infrastructure
• Depot conversion and ensuring safe-housing of a mixed fleet of diesel, CNG, battery/electric and hydrogen fuel cell
• Fire mitigation and what to do if battery or electrical componentry catches fire
• Vehicle range and charging requirements
• Total operational costs throughout expected life
• Mass increase to the vehicle.

The BIC will keep
the survey running for a short time and we encourage Industry to provide feedback for our consideration. The BIC has commenced a review of both electric and hydrogen international vehicle standards to determine what may be adopted and translated for Australian operations. The BIC is also working closely with the Commonwealth on how we might accelerate ADR / EU harmonisation for ZEBs.

Driver training on mitigating bus rollaway

ComfortDelGro Corporation Australia (CDC) recently produced a training video for drivers on how to mitigate bus rollaway events. Extensive research collated by CDC shows that, nationally, the majority of bus rollaway events happen at the depot or interchange. Research indicates that the majority of rollaway events happen during pre-trip inspections, meal breaks and end of day when the bus is being cleaned.
The video includes driver behaviour tips and engineering solutions that can be adopted as a part of a safety management system. Go online to download the video. CDC and the BIC encourage the circulation of this training video across all bus operations in Australia.

Technical update on TS160, ADR97/00 and ADR35/07
TS146 and TS155 is now replaced with TS160 for Bus Door Safety Systems.
A number of years ago, TfNSW (originally RMS), tasked the BIC with the re-write of a technical specification for a bus door safety system to include small buses. After extensive consultation with bus door manufacturers and close collaboration with TfNSW, we are pleased to announce that TS160 has now been released. 

TS160 is not retrospective. For existing buses, TS 146 and TS 155 will continue to apply.
TS160 will apply to all applicable buses first registered in NSW on or after 1 January 2023. Important to note that previous TS155 only applied to vehicles seating 25 or more (incl driver). The new TS160 now applies to vehicles seating over 12 persons (incl driver). 
Download the full spec from the TfNSW website.

On 4 March 2022, the Commonwealth released new ADR 97/00 – Advanced Emergency Braking for Omnibuses, and Medium and Heavy Goods Vehicles and replaced ADR35/06 with 35/07, expanding the applicability of the mandatory requirements for vehicle stability.

The BIC worked with the Commonwealth to include a clause in the new ADR97/00 that would ensure that buses specifically designed with spaces for standing
passengers were not required to comply. It is important to note that this clause does not preclude a supplier from fitting AEB to a bus with standing spaces (such as a school bus with ADR 68 seating), but does allow a supplier not to fit AEB to a route bus. 

Both ADRs will be mandatory for new models from 1 November 2023, all new buses from 1 November 2024, and all new goods vehicles over 3.5 tonnes GVM from 1 February 2025.
Both ADRs include appropriate wording to ‘exclude’ omnibuses designed for standees.

Download the new ADR97/00 here.
Download the updated ADR35/07 here.

Government plans to increase registration and RUC

The National Transport Commission is seeking feedback on proposed increases to registration charges and the Road User Charge (RUC).

Increases to registration charges
The proposal is that a 2.75 per cent increase be applied to the roads component of state/territory registration charges in 2022–23. The regulatory component of registration charges will be re-set on a cost recovery basis for 2022–23. The regulatory component of registration charges will remain unchanged for most heavy vehicle types.

Therefore, the weighted average increase across the total registration charge (which is the sum of the roads and regulatory components) will be slightly below 2.75 per cent.

Increases to RUC
2.75 per cent be applied in 2022-2023. This will increase the RUC from 26.4 cents to 27.2 cents per litre on 1 July 2022 (35.3 to 36.3 cents per kilogram for fuels sold in gaseous form).

Heavy vehicle charges revenue has remained relatively static due to the revenue and charges ‘freezes’ that applied to heavy vehicle charges from 2016–17 to 2020–21. Heavy vehicle charges were increased by 2.5 per cent for 2021–22.

The NTC – in short form – has put forward the view that the proposed increase would be significantly less than the amount of 24.1 per cent estimated as necessary to fully recover the heavy vehicle share of recent road construction and maintenance costs in 2022–23.

We welcome feedback
from Industry by emailing communications@bic.asn.au