Austroads: Transport Research and Trends

The purpose of the update to Guide to Road Design Part 1: Objectives of Road Design is to outline a proposed recommendation of amendments to the design domain and design exception process sections. The need for updating these sections is consistent with increasing industry challenges in designing and constructing road infrastructure in constrained environments or other various contexts, which make it impractical or impossible to adopt design solutions traditionally deemed as acceptable or normal practice.

Across Australia and New Zealand, many jurisdictions have their own guidelines in place to assist designers and practitioners in developing context sensitive design solutions, which may require the introduction of elements which depart from the design standards. These guidelines include processes for analysing risk and identifying risk mitigation strategies and are generally similar between jurisdictions.

In developing a proposed guideline for inclusion into Part 1, a systematic methodology was developed, planned and implemented which consisted of a literature review and stakeholder engagement.