1 Why Telematics?

Why do anything with telematics at all? It’s hard to get anywhere if you don’t have goals, and we had three main goals heading into this project. To get information on activity, on the road freights network, and on stops.

Activity

A few years ago we - people at desks in Canberra - had a problem. For years a great deal of what we knew about road freight in Australia came from a survey. Every few years, for a month, a sample of drivers were asked to record all their trips and, in time, we would learn about that month…

But this was very costly for everyone involved and we, and everyone else in freight have other needs.

We want to have on time information about activity. Government wants to know if it is going up or down because businesses that are getting stock expect to sell it, and that can flow on to demand accross the economy. Firms know if they are having more or less business but they want to know about everyone else; is everyone having a slump or are we doing something wrong. One month every few years was not enough.

Roads

Governments also need to know where trucks are going. They spend a lot of money on roads for trucks to use, but are the roads they spend on the ones that are being used. A route might appear obvious when one looks at a map, but what if drivers prefer the route without sun in their eyes, or the one that avoids a particular intersection or busy road. The reasons they don’t take the “obvious” route is obvious to them, but not to us. How does government make sure they know this too?

Firms and government also need to know how the network performs at different times, peak times can be much slower and also far more uncertain making it hard to know when a destination will be arrived at. Knowing when this happens can help investment by government and planning by firms. It can also help freight firms and clients find times that make delivery more certain and less costly.

Stops

Australian governments also spend a lot on rest areas, to make sure drivers can rest on long journeys, but are they in the right place, or are they being avoided because they don’t have the right facilities?

And then there’s much more we don’t even know we don’t know yet.

But first, we have to look at what we have to work with.