Austroads: Transport Research and Trends

The National Freight and Supply Chain Strategy sets the agenda for coordinated and well-planned government and industry action to 2040 and beyond, with a national vision for freight systems and supply chains to contribute to a strong and prosperous Australia.

The Strategy commits to action in four key areas:

• Smarter and targeted infrastructure,
• Enable improved supply chain efficiency,
• Better planning, coordination and regulation; and
• Better freight location and performance data.

This webinar, presented by Georgia O’Cianain, Andrew Higgins and Deb Fearns, provides an overview of the following action items under the Strategy:

• National Freight Data Hub, a federated data-sharing network to provide open access to government data, help industry share data together, and collectively answer the big questions about Australia’s freight performance and how we can improve it.
• Supply Chain Benchmarking Dashboard, a web-based data visualisation tool that provides detailed and interactive modelling of Australian transport and logistics supply chains across road and rail. A total of 150 commodities are available with a variety of capabilities including enhanced geographic filtering.
• National Urban Freight Planning Principles, seven high-level principles endorsed by Australian, state and territory governments that provide guidance for land use decision-making across all levels of government to improve planning for freight in Australia’s metropolitan areas.

Launched in 2011, the National Cycling Participation Survey (NCPS) has been run every two years. Its original aim was to establish a baseline and measure performance against the National Cycling Strategy 2011-2016. Until 2019 the NCPS was managed by Austroads, to maintain a continuous dataset. In 2021, Cycling and Walking Australia and New Zealand (CWANZ) took over the coordination of the survey, adding walking to get a baseline on the level of participation for walking across Australia.

In this webinar, the 2021 National Walking and Cycling Participation Survey (NWCPS) is presented by CWANZ, as coordinators of the 2021 survey, in conjunction with Austroads.

The webinar covers the methodology and provides a brief review of the results. Presenters also talk about how the data is used in different states and some interpretations that can be made.

Speakers include Cameron Munro, CDM Research, Robyn Davies from the Department of Transport and Main Roads, Queensland, and Dr Zarin Salter from the Department of Transport, Western Australia.

Guide to Road Design is Austroads’ most downloaded publication with more than 155,000 copies accessed in the last 18 months.

A recent project looked at whether improvements could be made based on recently released Austroads research. That review identified possible inclusions relating to improvements to practice focusing on Safe System, the vulnerability of motorcycles and specific heavy vehicle road design considerations.

A report “Inclusion of Recent Road Safety Research in the Guide to Road Design Phase 2” proposed updates to the Guide to Road Design, as well as suggested improvements for the Guide to Road Safety and Guide to Traffic Management. The report also detailed a process to be followed to include future research into the guides and bring any new updates into practice in an efficient and timely manner.

This webinar with Noel O’Callaghan and Malcolm Mak presents a detailed overview of the report.

This webinar presents the new Austroads Guide to Road Safety Part 6: Road Safety Audit.

Key topics covered in the webinar include:

• Strengthening the requirements within the Guide as the default for Australia and New Zealand and formal exemption protocol for jurisdictions.
• Identifying the roles, responsibilities and conduct required of all stakeholders to achieve optimum value from the process, especially including parties operating outside of the road agency, e.g. private sector clients. The importance of commissioning and responding to audits.
• The provision of further guidance and clarity on competency and qualification requirements to inform local protocols for the assessment across the tiers of auditor.
• Integration of road safety auditing within the Safe System and the emerging practical interface with recent tools such as Safe System Assessments.
• Improving the quality and consistency of how risks / hazards are expressed, assessed, and prioritised.
• New documents, templates and tools throughout the Guide, including audit checklists (now referred to as ‘prompt lists’), audit code of conduct, road safety audit policies, sample road safety audit reports etc.

The webinar presenters are Paul Hillier (Project Consultant), Joseph Le (Co-Project Manager) and Kenn Beer (Co-Project Manager and Technical Advisor).

Austroads project “Use of Road-grade Recycled Plastics for Sustainable Asphalt Pavements” is investigating the use of recycled plastics in asphalt. The project is well underway with results to date presented in two reports.

The first report examined the use of road-grade recycled plastics in asphalt pavements and investigated the most suitable types of recycled plastics for incorporation into asphalt.

The second report provided a comprehensive overview of the development of various testing frameworks for the characterisation of road-grade recycled plastic, the incorporation of recycled plastics in bitumen and asphalt and the study of possible emissions and microplastics release.

This webinar, presented by Andrew Papacostas, Dr Filippo Giustozzi, Yeong Jia and Dr Marie Enfrin, is the second session in a two-part series. It provides an overview of the outcomes of testing to date including techniques to assess emissions and microplastic release associated with the manufacture, placement and use of asphalt containing recycled plastic.

Austroads project “Use of Road-grade Recycled Plastics for Sustainable Asphalt Pavements” is investigating the use of recycled plastics in asphalt. The project is well underway with results to date presented in two reports.

The first report examined the use of road-grade recycled plastics in asphalt pavements and investigated the most suitable types of recycled plastics for incorporation into asphalt.

The second report provided a comprehensive overview of the development of various testing frameworks for the characterisation of road-grade recycled plastic, the incorporation of recycled plastics in bitumen and asphalt and the study of possible emissions and microplastics release.

This webinar, presented by Andrew Papacostas and Dr Filippo Giustozzi, is the first session in a two-part series and it details the outcomes of the potential use of road-grade recycled plastics in asphalt pavements and selection of the most suitable types of recycled plastics for incorporation into asphalt.

The Austroads Road Authority Data for Connected and Automated Vehicles (RADCAV) project studied the provision of agency-owned data to connected and automated vehicles (CAVs) addressing six high-priority data sets: roadworks, incidents, variable speed limit signs and lane control signals, static speed limits, traffic signals, and heavy vehicle access restrictions.

This webinar, presented by Vibeke Matthews and David Yee, details a data provision framework that can be used by an agency to build capability in providing data to vehicles. The framework consists of the following components:

Capability model – a model that describes the spectrum of capabilities for the provision of agency data relative to vehicle and road agency capability over time. This ranges from Day 0.5 Capability (decision and actions made by vehicle controller), to Day 4 Capability (decisions and actions made by the vehicle).

Reference conceptual architecture – a series of outputs that describe the business architecture and information systems architecture necessary to provide agency data to vehicles at various levels of capability.

Implementation guidance – advice on how to use the Capability Model and Reference Conceptual Architecture as part of a process to improve an agency’s data provision capabilities.

The data provision framework is flexible and does not prescribe one end-state for agencies. Agencies have the freedom to choose a target state that suits their desired outcome, available funds, and appetite for change. It also caters for changes in vehicle capability over time, given that the introduction of higher-capability vehicles may be some years away.

A recently completed project has recommended changes to the Austroads Guide to Road Tunnels Part 2: Planning, Design and Commissioning to provide guidance on rationalising road signs on the approaches to tunnels, to divert over-height and dangerous goods vehicles that approach tunnel entrances.

When these vehicles attempt to pass through tunnels that have not been designed to cater for them, this can cause significant damage to the infrastructure, massive traffic congestion and, in some unfortunate circumstances, injury or loss of life of the motorists. As such, it is highly advantageous to divert these vehicles away from tunnels wherever possible to reduce these negative impacts.

This webinar, presented by Bob Allen, Marcus van der Velden, Lindsay Edmonds and Charmaine Joe, covers the following:

• Project methodology and key findings of the review
• Current signage practices review and gap analysis
• Proposed signage scheme
• Human factors considerations.

The Australian Road Assessment Program (AusRAP) was introduced to Australia by state mobility clubs, with the Australian Automobile Association (AAA) providing leadership in partnership with Austroads, Australian Road Research Board (ARRB) and the International Road Assessment Programme (iRAP). The AusRAP partnership has worked together in conjunction with state, territory and local governments on infrastructure safety investment optimisation and measurement since 2001. A Memorandum of Understanding between AAA, Austroads, iRAP and ARRB was signed in 2012. Recognising the extensive use of the AusRAP protocols and systems at an institutional level by road agencies across Australia, leadership of AusRAP is now transitioning from the AAA to Austroads.

The Austroads-led AusRAP Program will build on an extensive platform of local experience and application by state and local government agencies, motoring clubs, Austroads and ARRB. In total over 300,000 km of AusRAP star rating and investment planning assessments have been completed, over 50,000 km of risk mapping and over 400 km of road designs have been star rated in Australia. The partnership will continue to benefit from, and contribute to, the global iRAP partnerships that are in place in over 100 countries worldwide.

This webinar covers the following:

• New leadership, governance and collaboration for AusRAP
• Global directions and learnings from the UK
• Exciting developments in Australia
• Next steps for AusRAP.

The webinar is presented by Geoff Allan, Michael Nieuwesteeg, Rob McInerney, James Bradford and John Hardwick.

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.