Austroads: Transport Research and Trends

Austroads Guide to Traffic Management (AGTM) has been a valuable resource for industry, particularly amongst traffic engineering and operations cohorts. The transport context is evolving rapidly, and a strategic review identified that a new approach is needed to keep pace with industry expectations and the strategic objectives of Austroads and its members.

The new Austroads Guide to Transport Operations and Management (AGTOM) is planned to feature a new format as well as updated content.

This webinar, presented by Richard Delplace, Andrew Somers, Craig Moran, Andrew Wall and Simon Latham, covers:

• The key findings of the review of AGTM.
• Insights from leaders within transport agencies on the challenges the new AGTOM needs to help users to navigate.
• The objectives, rationale and overview of the new AGTOM.
• Austroads’ plans to transition from the AGTM to the AGTOM.

The Austroads project progressing the National Harmonisation of Temporary Traffic Management Practice has gone through a significant reset, resulting from a recent review. The outcomes of the review and resulting reset were recently considered and approved by the Board of Austroads. This webinar, presented by Richard Delplace and Chris Koniditsiotis, covers the following:

• broad findings of the review and reset
• new governance arrangements including newly established Task Force
• focus on major reform implementation and stakeholder engagement
• a staged pathway to operationalisation.

Cycling is a sustainable means of urban travel. It has the potential to serve many short- and medium-distance trips – for commuting to and from work and school, shopping, and visiting friends – as well as providing recreation and exercise. Cycling promotes physical, social, and mental health, helps reduce car use, enhances mobility and independence, and is economical for both public and personal budgets.

This webinar is based on the book “Cycling for Sustainable Cities” written by Ralph Buehler and John Pucher. In the session, the authors explore how to make city cycling safe, practical, and convenient for a broad spectrum of ages, genders and abilities. They also discuss the latest cycling trends and policies around the world and consider specific aspects of cycling.

Based on data from 2019-2020 from cities around the world, they review the impacts of COVID-19 on cycling levels and government policies to promote cycling.

Taken together, the presentation demonstrates that successful promotion of cycling depends on a coordinated package of mutually supportive infrastructure, programs and policies. Cycling should be made feasible for as many people as possible and not limited to especially fit, daring, well-trained cyclists riding expensive bicycles.

We rely on road freight transport to keep Australia’s economy moving. Performance Based Standards (PBS) vehicles, that are typically longer and heavier, do this work more efficiently but how much road damage do they cause in the process?

This webinar, presented by Anthony Germanchev, Georgia O’Connor and Angus Draheim, explores the methods used by road managers to answer this question. It proposes a framework to support consistent approaches to understanding and comparing the pavement impacts of PBS vehicles. Some of the key steps government agencies are taking to support road managers in assessing PBS vehicles for network access are also outlined.

Australia and New Zealand produce about 510,000 tonnes of end‑of‑life tyres annually. Crumb rubber derived from end‑of‑life tyres has been used in Australia for several decades to enhance the performance of binders used in sprayed seals but prior to 2017 the use of crumb rubber in asphalt pavements was limited.

Due to the lack of crumb rubber binder grades suitable for use in asphalt in the Austroads national polymer modified binder (PMB) specification (ATS 3110), two Australian jurisdictions and the Australian Flexible Pavement Association recently developed specifications for crumb rubber binders for use in asphalt which were based on tests and testing protocols used in Arizona and California.

This webinar, presented by Robert Urquhart, focuses on the outcomes of an Austroads research project which investigated whether the crumb rubber binders that were trialled in asphalt could be specified in terms of the tests and testing protocols used to specify other types of PMBs in the Austroads national PMB specification. Specification requirements have also been proposed for a binder containing 9% crumb rubber by weight which could be used in sprayed sealing applications.

The webinar also discusses the results of laboratory asphalt performance tests which investigated the effects of the amount of crumb rubber in a binder on asphalt performance.

Austroads has recently published the final report for the three-year project Data to Support the Heavy Vehicle Road Reform, which has investigated a number of different aspects of the requirements, gaps, and opportunities for supplying infrastructure data suitable for supporting a future heavy vehicle cost recovery and investment process. It represents a total of seven years of work from 2013 to 2020.

The project explored issues related to the supply of data on freight routes required by the Heavy Vehicle Road Reform. This included: how to measure the level of service (LOS) of freight routes, mechanisms for obtaining nationally harmonised data about road assets, and providing insight into the nature, quality and consistency of road-related data across Australian jurisdictions.

This webinar, presented by Ulysses Ai, provides a summary of the project’s main activities and key learnings including:

• Development of the Heavy Vehicle Infrastructure Rating as a concise measure of LOS for freight routes.
• Development of the National Asset Register and learnings from processes seeking to obtain asset data from local governments.
• A study of candidates for a national base map for road-related data and guidance on subsequent processes for data-matching.
• An analysis of inconsistencies in traffic data.
• Investigation of practices across Australian jurisdictions for expenditure reporting data, pavement deterioration modelling, and maintenance data records.

Asphalt pavements are a major component of the Australian and New Zealand road networks. Road agencies in Australia and New Zealand have been putting great efforts to produce pavements which perform and are long-lasting. This has led to the development of national specifications to ensure materials of suitable quality are used for road construction.

Austroads ATS 3110 is used as a national performance-based specification for polymer modified binders (PMBs). The specification includes the consistency 6% (at 60 °C) property to evaluate the relative performance of a binder to resist rutting, as it is one of the major failure modes of asphalt pavements.

Consistency 6% tests are currently conducted using the elastometer instrument that was developed in Australia specifically for these tests. This instrument, however, is no longer being manufactured and the supplier is no longer providing technical support for existing instruments. A new test method has therefore been developed to determine consistency 6% properties using a dynamic shear rheometer (DSR) rather than the elastometer. The DSR is widely used to test bituminous binders and other materials across the world.

Presented by Young Choi, this webinar details the outcomes of the Austroads research project which was conducted to develop the DSR consistency 6% test method. The project work included an extensive literature review, equipment investigations, optimisation of test procedures and validation studies using many different types of binders. These studies were conducted to ensure that the new DSR test method is equivalent to the current elastometer test method.

Comparing the movement of commodities, domestically and internationally, helps to identify potential action areas to support Australian supply chain efficiency, competitiveness and resilience. As part of the Commonwealth international benchmarking project, the Supply Chain Benchmarking Dashboard was developed as a joint initiative between CSIRO and the Department of Infrastructure, Transport, Regional Development and Communications (the department).

The dashboard is planned for release in the second half of 2021, and provides modelling and insights on Australian supply chain performance to:

• support data-led decision-making to inform policy, investment and operational outcomes for government and industry
• provide a national picture of supply chain performance across a wide range of metrics, commodities and regions
• provide a comprehensive evidence base for international comparison.

This webinar demonstrates how users will be able to compare supply chain metrics across commodities, different transportation paths or segments in supply chains (e.g. producer to distributor, or distribution centre to port) and in different regions or locations (currently LGAs, states and territories).

The dashboard displays aggregated outputs from the Transport Network Strategic Investment Tool (TraNSIT) – a computer modelling tool developed by CSIRO that performs mass optimal routing of vehicle movements between thousands of enterprises. For each origin/destination enterprise pair, the model selects the least-cost travel path as well as the optimal vehicle configuration, allowing for road access and conditions, driver fatigue regulations and vehicle decoupling costs. The model outputs information on freight paths as well as detailed transport costs. Following release of the first iteration, stakeholder engagement is planned to gain feedback to further refine the model to best meet the needs of users.

Presented by CSIRO’s Senior Scientist Andrew Higgins and Ross Slater, Assistant Director at the department’s National Freight and Supply Chain Strategy Implementation Unit.

The Review of the Guide to Road Safety and Structure for Online Access project has updated the Guide to Road Safety with the latest research, primarily from Austroads published material, and restructured the guide for better online access and to allow content to be more easily added in the future.

This is a second webinar in a two-part series to provide an overview on the updated guide. Presented by Kenn Beer, Dr Tana Tan and Johan Strandroth, this session focuses on Part 7, which contains guidance on contemporary approaches to road safety strategy development and road safety management.

The webinar covers the latest concepts and practices in strategy development including target setting, backcasting for scenario building and the use of performance indicators to sustain a results-focused approach to whole-of-road system transformation.

The Review of the Guide to Road Safety and Structure for Online Access project has updated the Guide to Road Safety (AGRS) with the latest research, primarily from Austroads published material, and restructured the guide for better online access and to allow content to be more easily added in the future.

The newly updated and restructured AGRS is the first step in delivering a guide to road safety that is easier for readers to navigate and one that aligns with the Towards Zero philosophy. It is a starting point for further improvements and the generation of potential future research projects, especially in the area of Safe Vehicles and Safe People.

This webinar, presented by Dr Tana Tan and Kenn Beer, is the first in a two-part series and it provides an overview of the updated guide. Focusing on Part 1, the session explains how to use the guide and outlines key points for each of the new parts. It also covers opportunities for future research.