NZTA’s freight plan confronts systemic challenges

New Zealand’s freight system is under mounting pressure. Demand is rising, weather events are worsening, costs are volatile, and operators are navigating regulatory settings that have not kept pace with the country’s freight task.

The NZ Transport Agency Waka Kotahi (NZTA)’s Action Plan for Freight 2024–27 sets out to address these structural issues by tightening its weakest bolts – not by reinventing the system. Crucially, this is NZTA’s action plan, not a national freight master plan.

As David Shepherd, NZTA’s National Manager for Rail and Freight, puts it: “There has been a degree of misunderstanding. This is NZTA’s contribution to the wider freight conversation. It’s not the action plan for the whole of New Zealand.”

Even so, the plan is significant. For NZTA, it’s a chance to spell out how it intends to use its roles as planner, investor, regulator, and system steward to help stabilise and strengthen the freight network over the next three years.

The Action Plan is built around NZTA’s aforementioned functions, and each role influences the actions in the plan. For example, regulatory reforms draw on its statutory responsibilities, while the confirmation of nationally strategic freight routes sits within NZTA’s planning remit.

Strengthening the freight lens in Arataki, the agency’s 30-year plan, reflects its stewardship responsibility, pulling disparate datasets, local government inputs, and industry feedback into a more coherent picture of the national network.

Mr Shepherd describes the plan as taking on “thornier topics that are more systematic,” with a deliberate focus on issues operators cannot solve alone. It’s a fair description. Many of these issues, like permitting, data gaps, network consistency, have lingered for years without a clear owner.

The plan is structured around three outcomes: economic growth and productivity, resilience, and safety. NZTA and industry stakeholders intentionally framed these as interdependent.

“You only get economic growth if it’s done safely and reliably. If you prioritise one over the other, you get unintended consequences,” Mr Shepherd says.

New Zealand has no unified national view of freight flows, and that gap can limit good decision-making. So, the Action Plan tackles it head-on, with actions such as determining the ‘Value of Freight’ to the economy; updating the National Freight Demand Study; creating freight heat maps using real-world heavy vehicle movement data; and confirming nationally and regionally strategic freight networks.

They’re more than analytical exercises. They are meant to underpin future investment decisions, providing operators with clearer expectations about long-term corridors, service levels, and network reliability.

“This is about enabling industry to invest with higher degrees of assurance. If operators know a corridor is strategically recognised and maintained to a certain level of service, that supports confidence,” says Mr Shepherd.

Extreme weather has already exposed weaknesses across state highways, rail lines, and coastal shipping routes. On the resilience front, NZTA is widening its scope in a few important ways: identifying strategic weak points across modes; strengthening adaptation planning through Tiro Rangi; sharpening the recovery framework; and, importantly for coastal operators, supporting the new Coastal Shipping Resilience Fund.

They’re early steps but they point to a more deliberate approach to risk. The plan acknowledges that resilience is not a single asset issue (roads, rail and coastal shipping each play a part) and that “keeping the network open” is itself a productivity outcome.

Safety initiatives centre on compliance, vehicle standards, and the Commercial Vehicle Safety Programme. The plan also signals future regulatory changes, reflecting one of the Action Plan’s most immediate real-world impacts.

As Mr Shepherd emphasises, “you only get productivity if it is delivered safely”, and the plan’s safety actions are designed to reduce risks without constraining freight efficiency. One of the most consequential parts of the Action Plan is the package of regulatory reforms already announced for consultation.

The proposals span everything from heavy vehicle licensing pathways to COF and WOF frequency, and even a rethink of 50MAX and over-dimension permitting. Vehicle import standards are also under review, with the possibility of phasing in modern safety systems.

Mr Shepherd calls these “real outcomes” for operators; changes that will make the regulatory environment “more efficient and effective”, reduce compliance friction, and allow a more modern heavy vehicle fleet into the market. The reforms are also intended to support decarbonisation by reducing barriers to the adoption of low- and zero-emission heavy vehicles. In practice, that could remove some of the practical barriers that have slowed operators considering next-generation heavy vehicles.

The plan’s most extensive actions sit under freight data and network understanding, areas that Mr Shepherd says are foundational. Three initiatives, in particular, have practical implications for operators.

Strategic Freight Network

By 2025 NZTA expects publish updated nationally and regionally significant routes based on current data. This includes visualised freight flow mapping and identification of strategic freight hubs. For operators, this helps answer a longstanding question: Which routes will be prioritised for service continuity and investment? It won’t settle every debate about regional priorities, but it does give operators a clearer picture than they’ve had in years.

Freight heat maps

Using EROAD data, NZTA will map heavy vehicle movements and mass, helping identify corridors of national importance based on actual usage patterns.

National Freight Demand Study update

The plan commits to a long-overdue refresh of the NFDS, including a new methodology to enable ongoing trend analysis rather than one-off snapshots.

Mr Shepherd sees this as critical. “Without good data, you’re not looking at the collective network picture. Data will improve decision-making—it shows where the challenge points and opportunities are.”

Arguably the most significant structural shift may well be the establishment of a Freight Advisory Council. Mr Shepherd is unequivocal. It’s also something industry groups have been pushing for, some form of shared table where decisions don’t happen in isolation.

“Without industry, no action plan for freight can unlock outcomes.”

The council is intended to bring together central and local government, operators, ports, rail, and related agencies such as MoT, EECA, and the Sustainable Business Council. Its purpose is to identify the “vital few” system issues and coordinate responses.

The updated freight forums within NZTA are designed to complement, not replace, this council, covering strategic, tactical, and operational engagement threads.

That theme continues when it comes to intermodal connections and the realities of last-mile freight. The plan acknowledges that 85 per cent of freight travels less than 200 km and that last-mile costs make up 53 per cent of delivery costs.

Mr Shepherd stresses that NZTA is “not advocating for a particular mode” but wants to improve intermodal efficiency, especially at mode-transfer nodes.

While the Action Plan covers just three years, it explicitly links to longer-term frameworks, such as the next Government Policy Statement on Transport, NZTA’s 30-year plan, Arataki, and the need to address structural challenges such as an ageing fleet, ageing workforce, fragmented data, and urban growth pressures.

Mr Shepherd sees the plan as a foundation. “My hope is that a longer-term approach is bought into, and we work collectively together.” The Freight Advisory Council is expected to anchor that long-term alignment.

The Action Plan isn’t an industry wish-list, and it’s certainly not a silver bullet. It is a targeted, system-focused set of actions within NZTA’s remit, reinforced by the recognition that freight is a whole-of-system task.

It acknowledges the scale of the challenge: rising demand, climate risk, ageing assets, fragmented systems, and workforce pressures. But it also sets out clear, achievable steps to address the structural impediments that limit New Zealand’s freight productivity and resilience.

As Mr Shepherd notes, the plan works only if the sector works together. The next three will go a long way toward showing whether these incremental actions can add up to meaningful system change.