IN recent months, Main Roads has worked with agricultural industry peak bodies, in an effort to ensure the agricultural industry understood and complied with the legal requirements associated with the movement of oversize/over-mass agricultural vehicles.
This included developing easy-to-follow documentation, clearly outlining the agricultural pilot requirements.
So, did this have the desired outcome?
Well ultimately, yes.
It helped the agricultural industry to understand the requirements, which resulted in a number of industry representatives expressing their concerns with regard to the "unworkable" pilot requirements.
This subsequently resulted in Main Roads conducting a review of the agricultural pilot requirements and developing a new simplified system that provides a fair and reasonable balance between road safety and the efficient movement of agricultural equipment.
What is this new simplified system?
Let us first start with some of the main changes and benefits of these new requirements:
You no longer require a pilot vehicle, outside the metropolitan area, until the oversize agricultural vehicle exceeds 3.8 metres, which is an increase from the previous 3.5m.
This will enable a lot of equipment, such as self-propelled boomsprayers, to be moved without a pilot vehicle
An oversize agricultural vehicle can now have a width of up to 8.5m while being accompanied by an agricultural pilot.
The width was previously restricted to 7.5m
Oversize agricultural vehicle access in WA has been divided into three simple zones.
The zones are based on the risk of the road, which then determines the pilot requirements for the particular oversize agricultural vehicle.
In the lower risk zones, only one agricultural pilot is required;
The number of oversize agricultural vehicles allowed to travel in convoy has been increased from two to three; and
The 100 kilometre limit from the point of origin to the destination when utilising agricultural pilots has been removed.
The key to these new requirements is understanding the different zones.
These are the Red zone, Orange zone and Green zone.
The Red zone is the Perth metropolitan area.
This is a highly congested area, with significant traffic volumes and is a high-risk zone.
The general oversize heavy vehicle pilot requirements apply, which means you cannot use an agricultural pilot in the Red zone.
The Orange zone consists of State highways and main roads or local government regional distributor roads.
Although not as busy as the Red zone, these roads still have considerable traffic volumes, including heavy vehicle traffic and tourist traffic.
As such, they are considered to be a medium risk zone and a licensed heavy vehicle pilot is required to adequately manage oncoming traffic.
These roads generally have wider road widths, which allow other vehicles to overtake the oversize agricultural vehicle, therefore, a rear agricultural pilot is required to manage the traffic at the rear.
For the agricultural vehicles over 6.5m in width, an additional agricultural pilot is required.
However, there are some exceptions.
The rear agricultural pilot is not required if the oversize agricultural vehicle is only travelling a maximum distance of 5km on an Orange zone road.
Further to this, the licensed heavy vehicle pilot may drive the lead oversize agricultural vehicle, rather than being in the pilot vehicle itself.
The licensed heavy vehicle pilot will still be responsible for overseeing the pilot operations and ensuring the pilots are doing their job correctly, but this means the farmer can be the holder of the heavy vehicle pilot licence and still drive the expensive agricultural machine.
The Green zone consists of roads that are generally used by local traffic and have relatively low traffic volumes.
These are considered the lower risk roads and many of the road users will be familiar with the movement of agricultural equipment.
On these roads, only a single agricultural pilot is required when moving an agricultural vehicle up to 8.5m wide.
It is extremely easy if you can stay within a Green zone.
You can even travel on an Orange zone road for up to 1km when moving from one Green zone to another, without any change to the pilot requirements.
The 'gate to gate' provision allowing movement for up to 1 km without a pilot, subject to traffic management, still applies on all Local Government roads.
The traffic management is not onerous; it is only four prescribed roadside warning signs.
These new requirements have been developed with the assistance of the agricultural industry peak bodies.
A clear map depicting the three zones is currently being developed and will be available on the RAV Mapping Tool on the Main Roads website.
The Agricultural Pilot Requirements Flow Chart (above) provides details of the pilot requirements.
Further details on the requirements associated with moving oversize/over-mass agricultural vehicles are available on the Agricultural Vehicle page on the Main Roads website.