Stats SA looks at European model to gauge road volumes

There is still a data search going on at Stats SA to try to find the best method of calculating road freight volumes, according to Stats SA’s Vincent Parker. The dearth of road freight statistics, he added, might be overcome by the 2010 large sample survey (LSS) of the transport industry, but only if the traditionally cagey haulage industry co-operates more fully and discloses full operational details – something which most of them failed to do in the last LSS in 2006. In the meantime, the question being examined by Stats SA is whether the LSS is actually the right vehicle to collect freight data. “Apart from the poor response to the 2006 survey,” said Parker, “we’re finding that the LSS is not too good for data collection.” An alternative, he told FTW, might be the survey format that is used in Europe, and Stats SA is currently looking at how to apply this to the local road freight industry. Instead of a broad-based annual survey, the Europeans gather data on an individual truck basis – looking at each single vehicle movement and cargo data collected over a one-week period. “That,” said Parker, “is more like what we need.” Currently, estimates of freight volumes are provided by the annual state of logistics survey for SA conducted by the Council for Scientific and Industrial Research (CSIR), and these estimates are based on counts of trucks on major arteries. “At present, we are looking at the CSIR process to assess whether that data would be good enough to be used as official statistics,” Parker said. “The CSIR study gives estimates of totals, but with no estimate of variables – so the precision or reliability of the data has not been assessed.” But, with a bit of appropriate arithmetic manipulation of the CSIR data, Stats SA thinks that might be achieved. In the meantime Stats SA has re-instated the ongoing monthly survey of land freight transport which was discontinued in 2003 and results will be published from 2009. And, in 2010, the LSS of the transport industry will be repeated. “Stats SA will be making efforts to engage more effectively with companies that provided incomplete or inconsistent data to the previous survey,” said Parker