🚛Greywater terminal trials automated gate checks

The port is testing automated checks on two gate lanes at Greywater for three months, aiming to cut the time lorries spend getting in and out. Results are promised for the summer, as an average.

In April I read this as neighbourhood news that happened to be about freight. The Exceptions Inbox sees gate delays only as a late collection with no cause attached.

In September I came back to it, the week 📂 Carrier Scorecards discovery opened, and it read differently. A carrier's on-time figure for anything leaving Greywater includes however long its driver sat at that gate. The carrier does not control the gate. A scorecard that cannot tell queued at the terminal from left the depot late will mark down the wrong party, every time the port has a bad morning.

So: turn time is somebody else's delay sitting inside the number we want to score, and the port is about to start measuring it properly, lane by lane. Whether that data would ever be shared is a question for people above me and above Hana. It is on the discovery list as a question, not a plan.

And the usual request: a quarter off the average tells me little. I would like to see the slowest tenth of lorries, before and after.

Where it connects. Turn time is 🔤 Dwell time measured at one gate, which is the only reason I could read the article without a glossary. Hana Kobayashi works on the pilot numbers at 🏢 Port Vellan Port Authority. The two trial lanes can be seen from the gallery of 🏛️ Port Authority Visitor Centre, if somebody tells you which barriers to look at.

• Fictional local news, with a work angle. Business page of the Courier, Monday 28 April.
• 🏢 Port Vellan Port Authority is trialling cameras and automatic checks on two of the lanes at the main gate of the Greywater terminal for three months. The lorry's plate, the container number and the seal are read as it rolls up, and matched against the booking before the driver reaches the barrier.
• The number in the headline is truck turn time: how long a lorry spends between arriving at the gate and leaving with its box. The authority wants it down by a quarter on the trial lanes.
• A hauliers' spokesman is quoted as cautiously pleased and wants to know who is liable when the camera misreads a seal.
• I asked Hana Kobayashi about it on Saturday between problems. She smiled the smile of someone who has seen the pilot data and said the interesting part is not the average.
• It never is.