Austroads: Transport Research and Trends

A recent Austroads research project has examined opportunities to improve the design guidelines for thin asphalt–surfaced unbound granular pavements, with a focus on their susceptibility to asphalt fatigue distress.

This webinar presents the key outcomes of the project, including insights drawn from the analysis of road network data to assess the relative performance of thin asphalt surfacing treatments. It will also discuss the methodology and findings of a shift‑factor calibration approach developed, highlighting its implications for pavement design and the prediction of thin asphalt surfacing performance.

In addition, the session introduces a practical framework for establishing project-level curvature limits to mitigate the risk of premature fatigue cracking.

Overall, the project findings provide improved guidance for material selection, design, and construction of thin asphalt-surfaced granular pavements. This webinar will be of particular interest to pavement engineers, asset managers, designers, and professionals involved in planning and delivering road rehabilitation programs.

Road safety is a team sport – a marathon, not a sprint. The greatest gains occur when many elements synthesise and successes are shared. This webinar draws on experience across more than 140 countries, working alongside partners from every road safety ‘walk of life’ – including governments, development banks, industry, mobility clubs, and NGOs – united by an ambitious goal: a world free of high-risk roads, despite a crisis that claims more than 3,000 lives each day.

From advocacy at the United Nations, to aligning diverse stakeholders around common objectives, to collaborating with communities at the roadside in low- and middle-income countries, the International Road Assessment Programme (iRAP) and its partners are helping make safer journeys a reality.

In this session, Judy Williams, winner of the ACRS Women in Road Safety Award presented by Austroads at the 2025 Australasian Road Safety Conference, examined how a clear vision, strategic partnerships, and active community engagement create the conditions for meaningful and lasting road safety progress, and why communicating success matters as much as delivering it. It explored how connection brings clarity and impact: bringing the right people together at the right time with leadership and evidence; building capacity to deliver strategic implementation plans; unlocking investment and partnership opportunities; and learning through evaluation.

Using practical tools such as the Elements Wheel and SWOT thinking, Judy showed how progress doesn’t require doing everything at once, but through understanding which levers to pull and when, harnessing the power of many through community-building, mentoring, and partnerships.

Finally, the webinar highlighted the importance of making success visible. By sharing outcomes through human stories, compelling narratives, data, imagery, and effective communication, we can inform, persuade, inspire, and accelerate change. Progress comes from showing up, staying connected, learning from setbacks, and never giving up.

Discover the latest findings from the Austroads Review of Pedestrian Planning Guidance. Join moderator Mary Haverland (Avandra) and presenters Tim Judd (PJA) and Prue Oswin (Sidelines Traffic) as they share practical strategies for safer, more inclusive pedestrian infrastructure. Learn about a Universal Design and the Safe System approach to ensuring a safe pedestrian environment that accommodates all ages and abilities, with real-world case studies and actionable recommendations. We’ll foreshadow updates to the Austroads Guides and provide clear steps you can apply now. You’ll see how Safe System–aligned crossing treatments and Universal Design translate into practical decisions across suburban and regional contexts. The session includes a live Q&A and links to take-away resources you can use on your next project.

Speed is a significant contributor to road trauma, influencing both the likelihood of a crash, and also the severity of crash outcomes, regardless of the cause. Austroads is updating the Guide to Road Safety Part 3: Safe Speeds (AGRS Part 3) with the latest evidence and best practice in speed management. This webinar provides an overview of the new content in this interim Guide update.

Speed management is a rapidly evolving policy area, and Austroads continues to conduct research and assess the latest approaches to the topic. Work has already commenced to identify gaps in knowledge for the next update of the Guide, expected for release in 2026. This includes the recent publication of a new report titled ‘Review of Speed Management Evidence and Guidance’ (AP-T385-25). This report presents the findings of a literature review and engagement with stakeholders to identify and address key gaps in current guidance. The findings from this review are discussed in this webinar, including how these will inform the updated structure and content of AGRS Part 3.

This project involved the development of a guideline for bridge owners on managing the risk of bridge flooding, scour and resilience due to floods and an update to the Austroads Guide to Bridge Technology Part 8: Hydraulic Design of Waterway Structures (AGBT08) .

The guideline provides a framework for managing risks to bridge infrastructure caused by floods, focusing on improving resilience, operational performance safety. It aims to equip engineers, asset managers, and decision-makers with strategies to address flood-related challenges, particularly those associated with scour and structural vulnerability. The guideline highlights proactive measures such as pre-flood inspections, prioritising critical bridges, and real-time monitoring during floods. Post-flood recovery focuses on condition assessments, load testing, and criteria for safe reopening.

AGBT08 was updated to incorporate updated design related knowledge and guidance on hydrology and hydraulics in alignment with Australian Rainfall and Runoff 2019.

Extreme weather events including torrential rain, flooding, landslides, heat waves and bushfires, as well as longer term changes such as increasing temperatures and sea level rise, take a dramatic toll on our transport infrastructure and the functioning of our road infrastructure networks.

This webinar introduced the findings of the Austroads research project ESC6516 Research Climate Change and Natural Hazards Resilience Needs and Guidance Approaches. The project considered resilience across the full transport system lifecycle – Policy, Strategy and Planning, Business Case & Investment, Design and Construction, Network Operations, Maintenance and Renewals, and Monitoring and Evaluation.

Through stakeholder consultation and a global literature review, the report sets out a series of recommendations for the strategic development of Austroads guidance to holistically improve the resilience of the land transport system to climate change and natural hazards (CCNH).

The webinar shared the projects recommendations on:

• the definition of a resilient transport system
• foundational gaps to achieving transport system resilience
• the model and roadmap for Austroads’ guidance development to address these gaps.

Whether you’re new to CCNH resilience or working to embed it within any part of the transport system lifecycle, this webinar will help you understand how Austroads approach to guidance development will support the development of a resilient transport system.

Austroads Guide to Pavement Technology Part 2: Pavement Structural Design is the primary reference for designing new sealed road pavements in Australia and New Zealand and has recently been updated. Since its last major update in 2017, Austroads has completed several research projects. The latest edition of Part 2 incorporates new research findings and provides a general update.

This Austroads project has investigated methods for engineers to design more efficient and cost-effective road rehabilitation treatments by estimating the remaining fatigue life of existing asphalt.

Current design practice assumes existing asphalt layers have no remaining life, even when uncracked. Lower rehabilitation costs will result if design methods are improved to utilise the remaining life of existing uncracked asphalt.

In this webinar, the presenters:

• outline the outcomes of the project, including field and laboratory investigations on the Western Freeway in Victoria
• discuss the methods tested to estimate the remaining fatigue life of asphalt
• present the new framework for rehabilitation design to validate with future research.

This approach supports more targeted treatments, improved road performance, and long-term savings. The session is relevant for pavement engineers, asset managers, designers, and those involved in planning and delivering road rehabilitation programs.

The Austroads Guide to Pavement Technology provides informative guidance on different pavement types and the optimal conditions they are suited to throughout Australia and New Zealand. In addition, the Guide provides in-depth analysis and technical advice on the construction, maintenance, and performance of road pavement surfaces.

A project has been conducted to update the following Guides to achieve consistency with the various other parts of the Guide and other Austroads publications, such as Austroads Test Methods and Work Tips, that have been subject to changes in their most recent editions. These parts provide informative guidance regarding pavement technology, selection of pavement surfacing and an overview of the criteria by which pavement materials are used:

• Guide to Pavement Technology Part 1: Introduction to Pavement Technology
• Guide to Pavement Technology Part 3: Pavement Surfacings
• Guide to Pavement Technology Part 4: Pavement Materials

This webinar described the review process and stakeholder consultations undertaken to update the Guides, and discussed the major changes that have been made to the Guides. This update process ensures the Guides are maintained as a relevant and contemporary source of knowledge, which provide quality information and guidance to all those working with pavements across Australia and New Zealand.

The Austroads Guide to Pavement Technology Part 4B: Asphalt provides comprehensive guidance for the selection of constituent materials, mix design, testing, manufacture and placement of commonly used asphalt mix types in Australia and New Zealand. The Guide was first published by Austroads in 2007, followed by a major revision in 2014. The most recent edition presented in this webinar captures the major advancements in asphalt technology over the past decade. 

This webinar goes through the major changes to the Guide, including any new content not previously included in Part 4B: Asphalt. It will be especially relevant to anyone involved in the asphalt industry, including designers, road managers, asphalt suppliers and contractors.