Austroads: Transport Research and Trends: Recent Episodes
Austroads
This webinar presents the outcomes of Austroads Project APT1975, which conducted research to develop a new Austroads test method for evaluating the fatigue cracking performance of aged bitumen. The test method was developed for road agencies to select durable binders for constructing sprayed seal surfacings.
The development work included an extensive literature review of international fatigue cracking tests to identify suitable dynamic shear rheometer (DSR) tests. The most promising tests identified in the literature review were then conducted on a wide range of binders that were subjected to asphalt fatigue tests. This enabled selection of a reference binder test that showed the best correlation with asphalt fatigue life results.
The DSR time-sweep test was identified as a suitable reference binder test and was used to assess the fatigue cracking performance of bitumen samples after they were aged in a laboratory pressure ageing vessel (PAV) for up to 72 hours. The bitumen samples were then subjected to other DSR tests that could be performed in a shorter time than time-sweep tests, in order to identify a simple test that could be used instead of time-sweep tests which are time-consuming and complex.
The new Austroads test involves PAV ageing a 1 mm bitumen film for 72 hours and then measuring the complex modulus (G*) of the aged bitumen sample at 15°C using a test frequency of 10 Hz.
The Austroads Guide to Temporary Traffic Management (AGTTM) provides nationally consistent guidance for the planning, design and implementation of safe and efficient temporary traffic management across Australia and New Zealand.
Traffic Management Designers (TMDs) play a critical role in the temporary traffic management process. The planning and design phase provides the greatest opportunity to identify hazards, manage risks and develop practical, safe and efficient TTM solutions. As a result, TMDs are central to achieving effective on-road outcomes.
This webinar recording is suited to both practising and aspiring TMDs, and professionals working within or alongside the TTM industry who are looking to strengthen their understanding of the AGTTM and apply it more effectively in their day-to-day work. The webinar provided an overview of key topics relating to best-practice TTM design and summarised recent updates to the AGTTM that are specifically relevant to designers.
The Austroads Technical Specifications provide a comprehensive framework for the construction of roads and bridges, defining key requirements for materials, treatments and infrastructure across the industry. They establish a consistent, best-practice approach to the design, specification and delivery of road and bridge works. By standardising requirements across jurisdictions, they support greater efficiency, improved quality outcomes and more streamlined procurement and delivery processes for both industry and government.
This webinar provides an overview of the Austroads Technical Specifications, including how they are being developed in collaboration with jurisdictions and industry. It will explore the principles guiding their creation and the role they play in supporting consistent, best-practice road and bridge construction outcomes.
Presentations from agencies also outline their approaches to implementation, covering key objectives, delivery strategies and lessons learned. Speakers will share insights into their implementation processes, along with current progress and timelines for adopting the specifications within their organisations.
This webinar presents the development and application of the Minimum Data Requirements for Pedestrian Safety Guideline and its supporting research. Participants will gain an overview of the challenges associated with inconsistent and incomplete pedestrian safety data, and why a nationally consistent approach is critical for monitoring outcomes and targeting investment.
The session will explain how the research identified and prioritised pedestrian safety data sets, distinguishing between “ideal” and “minimum” requirements based on cost, effort, and contribution to safety outcomes. It will highlight the recommended minimum data framework, covering exposure and demographics, crashes and injuries, and physical environment data across strategic, tactical and site levels.
Attendees also learn practical approaches to data collection, use of proxy measures, current gaps, and emerging opportunities to improve pedestrian safety monitoring and decision-making in transport agencies.
This webinar presents the completed Austroads Charting a Path to Eliminating Road Death and Serious Injury project, including all three streams and newly released knowledge transfer resources. It introduces the Planning for Zero Framework (PfZF)—a practical, system-based approach to achieving Vision Zero by 2050—and demonstrates how it translates into actionable Zero Pathways tailored to jurisdictions.
Participants will explore key findings, practical road safety strategy development advice, and a comprehensive suite of artefacts now available through the Knowledge Hub, including briefings, fact sheets, infographics, engagement guidance, and messaging toolkits.
The session is designed for road safety leaders and practitioners, and general road and transport professionals, seeking clear, evidence-based guidance to move from road safety ambition to implementation—combining technical planning, change management, and stakeholder engagement to deliver sustained reductions in death and serious injury.
The Austroads Guide to Temporary Traffic Management (AGTTM) provides nationally consistent guidance for the planning, design, and implementation of safe and efficient temporary traffic management across Australia and New Zealand.
Recent revisions to AGTTM Parts 1–7, 9 and 10 (Edition 1.2) focus on continuing to align the Guide with contemporary temporary traffic management best practice, improving clarity, and strengthening consistency of terminology. Approximately 30 per cent of content across these Parts has been updated, while deliberately retaining the existing structure of the Guide. These updates represent an incremental and continuous improvement approach, refining guidance where while maintaining consistency for ease of integration with existing TTM documentation.
This webinar provides a practical overview of the key changes, their intent, and what they mean for those involved in the planning, approval and delivery of temporary traffic management.
This webinar presented the outcomes of Austroads Project NEG6439, which examined how fibre optic sensing technologies can be applied to support improved road agency services and functions.
While fibre optic networks are widely deployed across Australian and New Zealand transport agencies for communications, their use as a sensing capability remains relatively underutilised. This project explored how technologies such as distributed acoustic sensing (DAS), distributed temperature sensing (DTS) and strain fibre sensing (SFS) can be leveraged across a broad range of operational use cases.
The webinar outlines approximately 20 prioritised use cases across four key domains: traffic monitoring, anomaly detection, security and asset management. These include applications such as travel speed and volume monitoring, linear heat detection in tunnels, perimeter security, and structural health monitoring of bridges and tunnels. The session also presented an assessment of technology maturity, highlighting that several use cases are already at established to advanced levels (TRL 5–9), while others remain emerging or nascent and suited to targeted trials.
Practical guidance was provided on how these technologies can be integrated into existing transport systems, including key considerations for deployment, operations, and data management, as well as insights into market trends and capability requirements.
This webinar recording will be of interest to transport agencies, infrastructure operators, and practitioners involved in intelligent transport systems, asset management and network operations.
This webinar was presented by Irene Horvat and Henry Wu with a live Q+A moderated by David Yee.
Unbound granular materials play a crucial role in providing cost-effective road transport infrastructure across Australia and New Zealand. Compared to the thick asphalt and concrete pavements common in urban centres, thin bituminous surfaced unbound granular pavements offer a more economical solution for sealed road networks, albeit with lower load-bearing capacity and in some cases lower performance reliability.
The performance of unbound granular materials is primarily influenced by their shear strength, modulus, and resistance to material breakdown under construction and traffic loads. Improved performance tests are required to provide practical pavement design methods and performance-based specifications for their use in construction.
This webinar presents research to identify new performance tests recommended for future Austroads research. Performance characterisation methods were reviewed, including repeated load triaxial (RLT) testing and wheel tracker testing. In identifying potential new improved laboratory test methods, particularly in relation to rut-resistance, cognisance was taken of the shear stress reversals due to rolling wheel loads that occur in service.
This webinar highlights key themes from the Enabling Accessible EV Charging guidelines, which provide guidance on improving the usability of EV charging infrastructure for people with disability.
The session touches on selected aspects of the EV charging experience, including site layout, charging equipment, wayfinding, and payment, focusing on issues that commonly arise in real-world deployments. Drawing on research, consultation, and international best practice, the webinar will share insights into accessibility challenges and examples of good practice emerging in Australia and overseas. The webinar aims to support awareness and informed decision-making among planners, infrastructure providers, and policymakers as EV charging networks continue to expand.
This webinar presents the outcomes from a series of workshops with industry and users aimed at identifying future research needs and required changes to the Austroads Guide to Pavement Technology Part 4K: Selection and Design of Sprayed Seals. The aim of this projects was to continue refining the Austroads sprayed seal design method and its related guidance to better suit evolving traffic loads, pavement structures, and material technologies.
The Austroads sprayed seal design method, widely used in Australia, provides guidance on materials, treatment selection, and methods for calculating binder application rates and aggregate spread rates. In New Zealand, the chipsealing design method is detailed in Chipsealing in New Zealand.
Ongoing changes in traffic loadings, pavement structures and materials have prompted updates to the Guide that have been immediately implemented into a newly published version. To ensure the design methods remain reliable and that sprayed seals can perform under increased traffic volumes, updates were based on input from seal designers, transport agencies, consultants, and contractors as part of the workshops held in Australia and New Zealand. These changes, and the future research plan generated as part of this project will be described in this webinar.
As automated, connected and electric vehicle technologies continue to develop, road agencies across Australia and New Zealand need to prepare infrastructure for new operating conditions. Technologies such as Automated Vehicles (AVs), Connected and Automated Vehicles (CAVs), Electric Vehicles (EVs), Advanced Driver Assistance Systems (ADAS) and Cooperative Intelligent Transport Systems (C-ITS) place new demands on both physical and digital infrastructure. Many of these demands extend beyond the scope of current design standards.
This webinar presents the findings of Austroads Project CAV6428, which defines a set of high-level design principles to support infrastructure readiness for future mobility. The project reviewed international and local research, analysed existing Austroads and jurisdictional guidance, and engaged with Austroads member agencies to understand current challenges and priorities. The project outputs provide a structured foundation to support agencies through this transition, identifying key gaps and mapping how infrastructure capability can evolve over time.
The project identified 24 topic areas - 11 physical and 13 digital - where agencies require clearer direction to support emerging vehicle technologies. Across these topics, the report identifies 135 design principles covering areas such as managing transitions of control between automated and manual driving, ensuring readability of lane markings and signage, managing mixed traffic interactions, kerbside management for automated vehicles and EVs, ensuring reliable CAV communications, protecting data from cybersecurity threats, and supporting digital resilience.
The principles give agencies practical direction for planning and adapting infrastructure in an evolving technology environment. They support informed decision-making that reflects local context, operational needs and technology readiness. The principles are a flexible toolkit that agencies can apply selectively to suit different project types and stages of deployment, while supporting consistency across jurisdictions.
The project also developed an online mapping tool to help visualise and navigate the principles. This interactive matrices allow users to filter by topic area and explore how physical and digital considerations for vehicle technologies impact infrastructure.
In this session, presenters David Yee and Megan Sharkey explain the purpose and structure of the design principles, summarise the key physical and digital topic areas, outline how agencies can apply the principles in practice. The session will also demonstrate how the mapping tool can support practical application.
This webinar is relevant to professionals across road and transport agencies, including planners, designers, asset managers, ITS specialists and policy leads involved in preparing infrastructure for emerging mobility technologies.
Human Factors and Ergonomics (HFE) is the discipline that focuses on understanding and optimising interactions between humans and system components to enhance performance, safety, health and wellbeing. Human Factors Integration (HFI) is the process by which HFE knowledge, principles and methods are utilised throughout the system lifecycle to support the design of safe, usable and effective components.
In this presentation, we outline the new Austroads Guidelined for Human Factors Integration in Road Transport (HFI-RT). The HFI-RT guideline provides road transport system stakeholders with information to support the consideration and application of HFE knowledge, principles and methods during the design, implementation and operation of road transport system components (e.g. vehicles and in-vehicle technologies, traffic control devices, signage, roads and roadsides, advertising, training and education programs, policies and procedures). During the presentation, we will provide an overview of the HFI-RT guideline and demonstrate it via a case study focused on driver distraction.
This webinar provided an overview of the Austroads’ report, Keeping People Safe When Walking – Stream 2: Economic Assessment of Safer Speeds, completed as part of the Keeping People Safe When Walking program. The assessment applies a cost-benefit analysis (CBA) approach, which estimates and compares the costs and benefits for society from 12 different hypothetical speed limit reductions in a variety of (mostly urban) contexts. Emerging economic techniques were applied to value, in dollar terms, the benefits of reduced speed limits for society from reduced road trauma and improved pedestrian mobility. This was weighed against productivity-related costs from increased travel time. The assessment builds a framework and evidence to support road managers looking to assess speed limit changes.
In this webinar, attendees heard about:
- how speed limit reductions can be assessed using a cost-benefit analysis framework
- why it appears there is a strong case for safer speed limits as a key pedestrian safety intervention
- the key drivers of this result and areas where further evidence would add value for future policy reform assessments.
This webinar was presented by Anna Wilson. The Q+A was moderated by Phil Harbutt.
This webinar introduces the Travel to School Guideline, developed to support the planning and delivery
of safe, active travel for students.
The guideline promotes integrated, evidence-based approaches that prioritise children’s mobility, health,
and safety within transport and land-use planning.
It provides a practical framework for planning both new and existing schools, drawing on best-practice principles, policy guidance, and implementation tools suitable for a range of school environments.
During the webinar, we explore key elements of the guideline, including:
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Integrated planning – coordinating land use, school siting, and transport infrastructure to reduce reliance on car travel.
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Collaboration – working across government, schools, and communities to achieve successful outcomes.
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Integrated solutions – combining infrastructure improvements with travel behaviour change initiatives.
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Community-informed planning– a model to ensure local knowledge shapes context-appropriate solutions.
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Case studies, tools, and resources to support implementation and evaluation.
The guideline is supported by two research reports covering the principles and best-practice evidence behind the guidance
Concrete is the most widely used material in transport infrastructure, and one of the largest sources of embodied carbon in road and rail projects. Because these emissions are locked in at the point of construction, reducing emissions from concrete represents one of the most immediate and significant opportunities for transport agencies working toward net zero across Australia and New Zealand.
In this webinar, presenters discussed the new national guidance from Austroads, outlining practical, evidence-based pathways to lower embodied carbon while maintaining safety, durability and long-term performance. Drawing on case studies from across both countries, the session demonstrated how lower-carbon concrete is already being delivered, often in the industry.
The webinar also explored the staged roadmap for action, opportunities within existing standards and the proposed coordinated national approach to support consistent adoption and innovation across the transport sector.
The webinar was presented by Philip Vimpani, Sachinthani Karunarathna and Miles Dacre, with the Q+A moderated by Ben van Zanten.
The Austroads 2025 Environment and Sustainability Initiatives Stocktake examines how member agencies are developing and embedding sustainable practices across their organisations. The Stocktake included reviews of environment and sustainability strategies, policies, and practices related to transport assets, systems, and services, focusing on three key themes: overarching sustainability, biodiversity, and heritage.
Building on the 2023 and 2024 Stocktakes, the 2025 analysis offers deeper insights into the progress member organisations are making in integrating sustainability into their operations. Data was collected through a comprehensive survey and validated through focus group sessions. Agencies also completed a maturity self-assessment to reflect on their sustainability integration journey, helping inform the development of case studies showcasing best practice across Australia and New Zealand. Maturity indicators were created for each theme to support organisations in evaluating their current position and identifying opportunities for improvement.
The Stocktake also includes an international scan, reviewing policies and strategies from global counterparts, along with a detailed assessment of the policy, regulatory, and procedural landscape in Australia and New Zealand. This provides a clearer understanding of the complex environment influencing agencies’ ability to shape and implement sustainable outcomes.
During the webinar, we share the key findings from the 2025 Stocktake, highlight major trends and challenges, and explore the initiatives member organisations are undertaking to advance sustainability across the transport sector.
As electric vehicle (EV) uptake increases across Australia and New Zealand, there are new risks and operational impacts of EV incidents, and amended incident response practices are needed.
This webinar presents the Austroads framework from the project NEG6523 on EV incident response.
Watch to gain the evidence, tools and coordination insights to support forward planning and implementation for EV incident response, to reduce risk and improve safety and network resilience, including:
- A clear view of how EV fires differ from combustion engine vehicle fires, including thermal runaway and hazards, including off-gassing and secondary ignition.
- Practical steps in a 5-stage incident response process, from planning to recovery, aligned with Austroads’ traffic incident management guidance.
- Lessons from international case studies showing effective on-road responses and their local relevance.
- 17 practical recommendations to reduce risk and improve safety and network resilience from consistent EV incident management across jurisdictions.
This webinar is presented by Dr Eleanor Short, Emma Sutcliffe and Will Fooks.
Road agencies on behalf of governments in Australia and New Zealand are increasingly supporting the use of Large Freight Vehicles (LFVs) to deliver the growing freight task more productively, sustainably and safely.
The Austroads project Design for Large Freight Vehicles (NEF6394) aims to develop harmonised, best-practice road design requirements for modern and emerging LFVs for all new road and road upgrade projects along heavy vehicle routes.
This webinar discusses the first component required for this project: helping develop support for updating the guidelines and providing recommendations on where the Austroads Guidelines may need updating. It also details the potential next steps required in this process.
This webinar is presented by Sam Potts, Steve McKenna and Ryan Miller.
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.
How are Australians walking and cycling in 2025? The National Walking and Cycling Participation Survey is Australia’s most comprehensive source of data on how people move through their communities. Conducted every two years since 2011 and commissioned by Cycling and Walking Australia and New Zealand (CWANZ), the 2025 survey was delivered by Painted Dog Research and captures a nationally representative view of walking, cycling, and emerging micromobility behaviours.
This year’s study engaged over 12,000 Australians through a dual-mode approach (online and phone) and included several methodological enhancements. It sheds light on how often people walk or cycle, for what purposes, and how this is evolving - including increased use of e-bikes, e-scooters, and other rideables.
In this webinar, the Painted Dog team walks through the key findings from the 2025 survey across Australia and each state/territory.
Calvin Lim from Painted Dog Research presents the results from the research, alongside representatives from CWANZ. The session also includes a Q&A Panel discussion featuring Michelle Prior, Chair of CWANZ, Kirsty Kelly, CEO of Transport Professionals Association and Dr Ingrid Johnston, CEO of Australasian College of Road Safety.
As transport systems grow more complex and interconnected, the ability to manage both planned and unplanned Intelligent Transport System (ITS) outages is essential to keeping people and goods moving safely. This webinar presents findings from an Austroads project focused on strengthening the resilience of Transport Management Centres (TMCs) in the face of ITS disruptions.
The research involved consultation with transport agencies across Australia and New Zealand, and a review of local and international practices. Drawing on operational insights, shared challenges, and real-world examples, the project developed the TMC Response to ITS Outages Framework, which is a practical tool to support structured planning, response, and recovery for ITS disruptions.
This session covers:
- key themes from agency consultation and operational research
- real-world case studies highlighting how agencies have responded to ITS outages
- the Framework and its components, from business continuity to recovery
- how it supports readiness for both planned (e.g. maintenance) and unplanned (e.g. system failure, cyberattack) outages
- tools including risk matrices, training approaches, and standards alignment.
This webinar is relevant for a range of road/transport agency staff, including TMC managers and operators, ITS and IT managers, along with resilience planners and those involved in responding to ITS outages.
Austroads' Bridge Assessment Guideline: Heavy Vehicles emphasises risk-informed decision-making for the asset management of road bridges and the management of heavy vehicle access. The emphasis on decision-making, rather than focussing only on the calculation of rating factors or assessment ratios, reflects the multitude of considerations faced by road agencies when making decisions concerning bridges.
The Guideline provides assessors and road agencies with a framework to reduce conservatism in the assessment of road bridges for heavy vehicle access, particularly for bridges that do not meet the requirements of AS 5100:2017 or the NZ bridge manual. Where assessments indicate unsatisfactory performance despite in-field evidence to the contrary, the Guideline offers bridge-specific advice for explaining the plausibility check prescribed in ISO 13822:2010 consistent with fundamental engineering principles.
In line with its focus on heavy vehicles, the Guideline provides advice and techniques for managing access by these vehicles over bridges. It distinguishes between bridge assessment, which is focused on structural performance, and heavy vehicle access management as related but distinct activities.
The webinar outlined the decision making framework as well as provided an overview of the Guideline’s contents.
The Austroads Bridge Awards celebrate outstanding achievement in bridge design, management and delivery across Australia and New Zealand. Recognising innovation, technical excellence and collaboration, the Awards highlight projects that address complex engineering challenges while contributing to safer, stronger and more connected communities.
This was the first of two webinars showcasing the 2025 Award winners. Presenters shared insights into the design, delivery and outcomes of their projects and answered audience questions.
This session covered:
- Excellence in Sustainability – Victoria Bridge Refurbishment QLD, submitted by Arup, Brisbane City Council, Nick Stevens Consulting, ACCIONA and Freyssinet Australia
- Excellence in Innovation – Kangaroo Point Bridge, submitted by BESIX Watpac and Brisbane City Council
- Excellence in Asset Management and Maintenance – Manganuku Bridge Strengthening, submitted by Beca, NZ Transport Agency Waka Kotahi, Contech, Optimech International Ltd and Eastbridge Ltd.
This practical webinar unpacks the new cycling and micromobility planning tools from Austroads' recent report ‘Improving Austroads Guidance for Cycling and Micromobility Planning’ (AP-R724-25). This session is designed for transport practitioners looking to apply best practice principles in real-world projects.
Presenters explore the updated Cycling Level of Service (CLoS) tool, the All Ages and Abilities Facility Selection tool, and discuss practical approaches to road space reallocation, intersection design, and micromobility integration. Whether you're working in planning, design, or delivery, this webinar will help you navigate the tools and apply them confidently to uplift cycling outcomes across your network.
Governments around the world have set sustainability targets in areas such as greenhouse gas emissions , climate resilience and the circular economy. Meeting these sustainability targets will challenge Austroads member agencies and the infrastructure sector to identify and adopt new and changed approaches.
This webinar presented the findings of the Austroads research report, Sustainability Review of Austroads Technical Specifications and Test Methods. Drawing from lessons learned from preparing the report, presenters explored the research that examined Austroads Technical Specifications to identify specific opportunities for improvement and how to addresses barriers that hinder progress.
Movement and Place is a cross-cutting planning principle that that recognises streets and roads as both transport corridors and public spaces; supporting the flow of people and goods while also shaping the activity, built form and identity of places.
This webinar introduces the findings of the Austroads research project NEG6384 Movement and Place Guidance, which provides the foundation for updated and more unified Movement and Place content across the Austroads Guide to Traffic Management and related resources.
Through extensive stakeholder consultation and a review of leading national and international frameworks, the project identified gaps in current Austroads guidance. It also revealed the varied maturity levels of implementation across transport agencies in Australia and New Zealand, highlighting a critical opportunity to strengthen consistency, collaboration and innovation.
The report sets out a series of recommendations designed to update and streamline Movement and Place guidance, focusing on:
- Consistency: A shared language and core concepts across Austroads publications.
- Best Practice: Identification of proven tools and frameworks already in use.
- Clarity: Practical direction through case studies and real-world examples.
Whether you’re new to Movement and Place or working to embed it within policy, planning or project delivery, this webinar will help you understand how updated guidance can support more balanced, people-focused transport networks across the region.
In this webinar, Sjaan Koppel, winner of the Austroads-sponsored Women in Road Safety Award 2024, presents findings from an Australian study on the importance of correct seatbelt use during pregnancy for maternal and fetal safety in car crashes.
Sjaan discusses practical strategies to improve public health messaging, healthcare guidance, and vehicle design, providing valuable insights for road safety stakeholders and healthcare providers.
Inconsistency in the design of traffic barriers for bridges has been identified as a major issue in current practice throughout Australia and New Zealand. The need for standardised solutions has been recognised by road jurisdictions, consultants, and contractors. Key concerns include the determination of appropriate barrier performance levels, structural design criteria, the lack of standard barrier design details, guidance on retrofitting existing bridge barriers, bridge approach barriers and overpass bridge support protection.
To address this, Austroads commissioned a review of the Austroads Standardised Bridge Barrier Design Report AP-R445-13 1 based on current research, guidance, and standards. The project also aimed to verify compliance of bridge barrier designs and guidelines against the relevant Australian Standards that have been recently updated, and the American Association of Highway and Transportation Officials (AASHTO) Manual for Assessing Safety Hardware (MASH). To achieve this a comprehensive literature review was undertaken, full scale crash testing was conducted and Finite Element Modelling created and calibrated.
This webinar covered:
- The project and updated Austroads Standardised Bridge Barrier Design Guideline
- The crash testing including Finite Element Modelling and full-scale crash test.
The transport sector, particularly in road network operations and management, is experiencing a period of significant and rapid change globally. This disruption is directly affecting how people and industry access, navigate and use transport and road networks. Expectations around transport, travel needs and user behaviour are shifting.
More broadly, these changes are contributing to the growing momentum to improve how we live and work, and how our cities function and evolve. As a result, the capabilities needed to manage and operate transport networks are also changing quickly.
The changes within the sector can be grouped into five key areas:
- network safety
- technological advancements
- environmental sustainability and climate change
- shifting network demands
- evolving customer and stakeholder expectations
In response, Austroads has commissioned the Road Manager Operations Capability Framework, supported by a research report. Together, these outline how road managers can effectively respond to emerging trends in transport operations.
The framework identifies four core capabilities: communication, stakeholder engagement, leadership and change management. It also outlines four operational capabilities: network management, incident and event management, system management, and data and insights. Each capability is supported by a set of skills mapped against a proficiency matrix.
The webinar, presented by Richard Boggon and Thomas D’Arcy, explores the trends shaping the future of road network operations. It also provides a detailed overview of the capability framework, the skills and proficiencies it defines, and how it can be applied and adopted within the sector.
This webinar provided an overview of the Austroads Report, ‘LED Lighting in Road Tunnels – Best Practice Approaches’ which summarises the process undertaken to explore tunnel lighting upgrades to LED, and provides best practice guidance for tunnel owners and operators considering the transition to more efficient lighting systems.
Many existing tunnels currently use fluorescent or High Pressure Sodium (HPS) lighting, and there is a growing opportunity to replace or retrofit these with more efficient light emitting diode (LED) equivalents. While LED luminaires generally boasts higher efficacy than fluorescent and HPS equivalents, lighting upgrade projects can present major technical and cost challenges.
Drawing on stakeholder consultations and a literature review, this webinar discussed current practices, common challenges, and practical considerations for planning and delivering lighting upgrades. Presenters used local case studies and project experiences to provide recommendations to support informed decision-making throughout the project lifecycle for future projects and also answered attendee questions at the end of the seminar.
As jurisdictions across Australia and New Zealand increasingly rely on data to improve road safety, transport efficiency, and sustainability, Austroads’ Telematics Analytics Platform (TAP) is at the forefront, providing road agencies data to make better-informed decisions.
Managed by Austroads, TAP provides secure, online access to aggregated and anonymised telematics data from vehicles enrolled in the National Telematics Framework schemes. It offers invaluable insights into vehicle movements, road usage, and infrastructure performance, enabling local agencies to optimise their strategies and operations.
This webinar focused on the benefits of using telematics data for local asset management and transport planning – particularly with regard to restricted access heavy vehicles. Presenters spoke about how local transport managers harness data from TAP to drive improvements in infrastructure management, land use and urban planning, road safety, and transport efficiency.
What was covered:
- What data is included, and what the data represents
- How local road managers are using TAP to enhance road safety, optimise decision-making, and improve road network performance
- Key benefits of integrating telematics data into local transport planning and asset management
Automatic Crash Notification (ACN) systems, such as eCall, automatically notifies emergency services in the event of a crash, transmitting key data such as the location, time and severity of the incident. The primary purpose of ACN is to aid faster response time to crashes, increasing the likelihood of occupants surviving a crash. While ACN technology is becoming increasingly common in new vehicles and personal devices like smartphones and smartwatches, Australia and New Zealand face challenges in its adoption.
As part of the project, a research report was developed, which provides a summary of the ACN services emerging in Australia and New Zealand, including their operation, benefits, market uptake, and high-level costs to implement. Approaches taken in other countries are also identified, to assess the applicability and potential implications of these approaches to Australia and New Zealand.
In this webinar, the presenters outlined project aims, methodology, key findings from the report and next steps. Drawing from lessons learned from preparing the report, international deployments and local stakeholder feedback, this webinar explored how ACN can be effectively implemented to maximise safety and economic benefits, and highlight key decisions around technology standardisation, investment in emergency response systems, and ensuring equitable access to the technology. Presenters also answered Q&A at the close of the session.
Are you looking for an opportunity to work with Austroads to help Australian and New Zealand transport agencies deliver efficient, reliable, and safe mobility to their customers?
This webinar introduced new projects lined up for the 2025-26 financial year. Consultants interested in tendering for Austroads projects will find this session beneficial.
The session covered the Austroads tendering process with presentations from Austroads program managers:
- Ross Guppy, Program Manager Transport Infrastructure
- Michael Nieuwesteeg, Program Manager Road Safety and Design
- Amy Naulls, Program Manager Transport Network Operations
- Joanne Vanselow, Program Manager Vehicles and Technology, and Environment and Sustainability
This webinar was moderated by Paul Davies, General Manager Research, Guidance and Practice.
In this webinar, MACA Chief Executive Helen Lindner and Professor Julie Brown discuss an Austroads project for Australia and New Zealand investigating specialty harnesses and vests. These products are sometimes used by children and young people with disabilities and medical conditions when travelling in motor vehicles.
The project aimed to improve knowledge and understanding of why these products are used, how people are accessing them, their compatibility with different vehicle types, and their design and safety. In the webinar, the presenters outline the project aims, methodology, key findings, expert safety recommendations and next steps.
Polymer modified binders (PMBs) are used in road construction to provide better performance than unmodified bitumen. As these materials consist of multiple components (i.e. bitumen, polymer and performance additives) the different components in a PMB can separate out, or segregate, when PMBs are stored hot before use in road construction.
The Australian PMB specification (Austroads ATS 3110) currently includes segregation tests (ATM 108) to determine whether the components in a PMB will segregate during hot storage. ATM 108 tests were developed considering current generation PMBs containing a single polymer type, but may provide misleading results if they are used to characterise next generation PMBs containing multiple polymer types. This webinar will summarise the outcomes of an Austroads project which developed a new segregation test (ATM 104) which is suitable for use with both current and next generation PMBs.
The webinar covered:
- Issues with the current ATM 108 test for characterising PMBs containing multiple polymer types
- The learnings obtained from a literature review of Australian and overseas segregation tests which were used to develop a suitable test to characterise the segregation properties of current and next generation PMBs
- The results of laboratory studies which investigated the sensitivity of the new test to segregation in current and next generation PMBs.
The webinar was presented by Dr Robert Urquhart and Robert Busuttil, who also answered attendee questions during the session.
Pedestrian safety is a critical concern worldwide, and some countries have been particularly successful. Sweden, Norway, the Netherlands, and Denmark have achieved 40-60 per cent reductions in pedestrian deaths over the last 20 years. Australia and New Zealand, however, lag and pedestrian safety is only marginally improving.
Achieving Australia and New Zealand’s vision for road safety, where no one is killed or seriously injured, will be challenging for pedestrian safety without a shift in our current approach. The Keeping People Safe When Walking: Stream 1 project found that comprehensive implementation of known interventions could reduce pedestrian fatalities and serious injuries in Australia and New Zealand by 70-90 per cent.
The webinar covered:
- pedestrian safety risk priorities
- priorities to improve the data needed to support investment in pedestrian safety
- strategies and interventions to progress Vision Zero for pedestrian safety
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.
The National Training Framework for Temporary Traffic Management has been operational since January 2024 and has been implemented by South Australia, Victoria, Northern Territory and Tasmania. The Austroads Guide to Temporary Traffic Management (AGTTM) provides comprehensive guidance for the planning, design, and implementation of safe and efficient temporary traffic management practices in Australia and New Zealand. Substantial revisions have been made within AGTTM Part 8 relating to the national harmonisation of training associated with temporary traffic management. The purpose of updated content within AGTTM Part 8 is to bring the guide in line with National Harmonisation of Temporary Traffic Management, which includes the National Training Framework.
AGTTM Part 8 has been reviewed and updated to reflect Austroads members' agreed operational policy position on the Training Framework, RTO Approval Framework and Prequalification Scheme. These processes comply with a harmonised approach to work, health and safety requirements, and relevant training and educational requirements. Additional changes have been made to reflect industry best practices, clarify content, and address terminology consistently. This webinar was presented by Point8’s Rosie Toohey and Peter Bilton.
This webinar introduced the new Austroads Guidance for Cycling and Micromobility Planning, a resource for professionals seeking to deliver safer outcomes for all road users. The project aimed to deliver a consolidated and nationally consistent approach to cycling and micromobility planning and includes recommended changes to the Austroads Guide to Traffic Management.
The webinar shared the key themes that emerged from research and consultation. It introduced the three overarching recommendations of the Guidance: providing stronger links to best-practice cycle planning and design principles; recognising that considered terminology can help deliver projects; and updating the AGTM's scope to include wider micromobility options. Recommendations are supported with practical tools and strategies to facilitate better cycling and micromobility planning outcomes. The webinar was presented by Clare Huggins and James Laing, and moderated by Mary Haverland.
Australia’s freight industry is at a turning point. The transition to low and zero-emission heavy vehicles (ZEHVs) is critical to achieving net zero targets, but it presents significant challenges for road infrastructure. As these vehicles are often heavier than their diesel counterparts, they place additional strain on pavements and bridges—potentially increasing maintenance costs and accelerating road deterioration.
Australia has a long history of engineering cost-effective road networks, enabling an extensive transport system despite the country’s vast geography and relatively low population density. However, as transport emissions come under greater scrutiny, government and industry leaders must navigate complex trade-offs between sustainability, infrastructure resilience, and freight efficiency.
The report, Zero Emission Heavy Vehicles and Road Pavements: Comparing Australia and New Zealand to Europe and North America, explores these challenges and outlines potential pathways for government and industry to support the decarbonisation of heavy transport while ensuring Australia’s road network remains functional and cost-effective.
Sprayed seals are a widely used, critical component of the road system in Australia and New Zealand, being the predominant type of sealed road surfacing in both countries. Traditional sprayed sealing practice sees a heavy reliance on non-renewable, virgin materials for the two major components, the bituminous binder, which is refined from crude oil, and aggregate, which is extracted from a quarry.
Austroads has recently completed a project to gather knowledge and increase the understandings about sprayed seal technologies and practices that can be used to improve their sustainability in terms of environmental impact. The project report has identified several opportunities that may be pursued to improve the sustainability of sprayed seals.
This webinar discussed the findings of the project and provided an overview of the report, which contains:
- a literature review, conducted to identify and evaluate new and emerging environmentally friendly, sustainable technologies and practices, and innovative materials and methods for sprayed seals
- a description of current sprayed seal materials and practice
- alternative approaches to binders (including additives, emulsions and bio-binders), aggregates and precoating, cutter oils, and construction equipment.
The session also focused on the lifespans of sprayed seals, impacts of climate change and an environmental life cycle analysis to review the impact of different sealing approaches. The webinar was presented by Steve Patrick and Robert Busuttil. There were question and answer opportunities during the session.
Road infrastructure investments are currently planned and prioritised under what could be considered a ‘top-down’ process. Road agencies are typically funded through budgetary processes whereby road funding needs are mostly weighed against other budget priorities. However, when a road is a lifeline route – where there are limited transportation alternatives –the external impacts and costs imposed on both users and non-users from this road becoming inaccessible can be very significant.
These impacts can be difficult to both measure and value and, because of this, lifeline routes may have been historically underfunded. This is pertinent with climate change meaning that road managers are increasingly encountering problems managing natural hazard events on lifeline routes.
In light of this, Austroads has updated their Lifeline Risk Indicator Tool and migrated it to the Austroads website as an online-enabled tool. This tool has two purposes. First is to identify lifeline freight routes and allow road managers to establish a lifeline route network. Second is to rank investments in lifeline routes in terms of economic and social impacts.
This webinar, presented by Ben Mason, Dr Stacy Rendall and Valentin Perez, stepped through the process undertaken to update the tool and a practical run through of how the web-based Lifeline Risk Indicator Tool can be used.
Climate change is causing irreversible damage to communities, the economy and the environment, and it is imperative that strong and sustained action is taken to limit its future impacts. Extreme weather events are projected to become more frequent and intense, increasing the vulnerability of transport network assets and the communities they serve. Climate change impacts the ability of transport networks to provide lifeline infrastructure services that are crucial to the distribution and continuous flow of goods and services essential for human livelihoods, the functioning of society and economic prosperity.
The physical impacts of climate change are a common threat to Austroads transport agencies, and these will only grow in frequency and intensity as the climate changes, causing wide-spread disruption to transport network’s ability to deliver the levels of service expected.
Effective and responsible asset management is crucial for agencies to adapt to and mitigate the impacts of climate change. Such practices balance performance, cost, and risk over time to ensure that transport network needs are met while maximising return on investment and providing the required levels of service.
This webinar presented the outcomes of Austroads’ recent project that developed practical guidance for asset managers to embed consideration of climate resilience into their asset management processes.
The project identified a number of key issues and developed practical recommendations for each of them covering asset management systems and processes, the asset lifecycle, criticality and vulnerability assessments, valuation of climate resilience measures and asset information management. The guidance will equip asset managers with knowledge to improve their processes and achieve their asset management objectives.
The webinar was presented by Upeshika Heenetigala, Jesse Sounness and Qindong Li. There were question and answer opportunities during the session.
Are you looking for an opportunity to work with Austroads to help Australian and New Zealand transport agencies deliver efficient, reliable, and safe mobility to their customers?
This webinar recording introduces new projects lined up for the 2024-25 financial year. Consultants interested in tendering for Austroads projects will find this session beneficial.
The session covers the Austroads tendering process with presentations from Austroads program managers:
- Ross Guppy, Program Manager Transport Infrastructure
- Michael Nieuwesteeg, Program Manager Road Safety and Design
- Amy Naulls, Program Manager Transport Network Operations
- Joanne Vanselow, Program Manager Future Vehicles and Technology, and Environment and Sustainability.
The webinar was moderated by Paul Davies, Austroads General Manager Programs.
Following extensive engagement with industry, representative specialist groups and transport agency stakeholders across Australia and New Zealand, Austroads has developed a guide to digital engineering.
The purpose of the guide is to assist transport agencies in Australia and New Zealand to deliver and operate their assets more effectively through obtaining better value and consistency in the application of digital engineering capability.
The guide communicates the need for a strategic approach to digital engineering alongside careful consideration and planning, clear engagement and support for its implementation.
This webinar, presented by Will Hackney and David Heins, provides an overview of the guide, including why it is needed, the structure of the guide, approaches to developing a strategy, roadmap, implementation planning, learning and development framework, and case studies.
The project aimed to assess and demonstrate the viability of incorporating other-than-truck tyres crumb rubber into asphalt applications from an operational and constructability standpoint. Following the initial part of the project that assessed the readiness of the tyre recycling and asphalt industries to handle crumb rubber from any sources of end-of-life tyres, the demonstration project in Tasmania showed no significant differences among the three asphalt mixes, suggesting that more attention should be directed towards crumb rubber produced from tyres other than trucks – some of which are only minimally recycled despite their significant volume.
This webinar, presented by Tony Aloisio from the Australian Flexible Pavement Association, will provide a detailed overview of the demonstration project in Tasmania and its findings.
Transport sector emissions are a significant and growing contributor to both Australia and New Zealand’s total greenhouse gas emissions. Enabled transport sector emissions – those occurring as a result of use of transport systems (e.g. road user emissions) account for the largest portion of transport sector emissions. Beyond road user emissions, there are also significant emissions associated with direct transport agency operations and supply chain embodied emissions from the construction and maintenance of associated infrastructure.
The Decarbonisation Decision-Making Guidance (User Guide), and associated multi-criteria analysis (MCA) tool, aims to assist agencies and practitioners in the strategic prioritisation of emission reduction interventions. The User Guide and MCA tool are designed to work alongside (not replace) established decision-making processes such as business cases and cost-benefit analysis. The User Guide and MCA tool provide a systematic approach for assessing and prioritising interventions and facilitating an evidence-based decision-making process to prioritise the most impactful, cost-effective, and technologically viable options. The approach was developed in line with the Infrastructure Australia Guide to multi-criteria analysis – Technical guide of the Assessment Framework.
This webinar, presented by Nick Gallaugher and Georgia Harmey, provides an overview of the User Guide and MCA tool outlining the key concepts and process.
Transport infrastructure and systems are typically designed to withstand local weather events based on historical records of climate. However, historical climate data is no longer a reliable predictor of future impacts due to climate change. Extreme weather events are projected to become more frequent and intense, increasing the vulnerability of transport networks and the communities they serve.
Austroads has developed Climate Change and Natural Hazard Risk Assessment and Adaptation Planning Guidelines. The guidelines set out a framework for transport agencies to consider when undertaking climate change and natural hazard risk assessments and developing adaptation plans with examples provided throughout. The guidelines are intended to be flexible, guiding the application of both high-level and detailed risk assessments of physical and transition risks.
This webinar, presented by Allan Klindworth and Upeshika Heenetigala, will step through the process set out in the guidelines, highlighting key concepts with examples and supporting resources. There will be question and answer opportunities during the session.
Christchurch has developed over 75km of separated cycle facilities retrofitted across the road network. The Major Cycleway Programme has enabled Christchurch to become the leader for cycle infrastructure in New Zealand. The 2011 earthquakes experienced in Canterbury, New Zealand caused significant devastation and destruction across the city. This disaster was a catalyst for change and provided Christchurch an opportunity to rebuild new and create a new identity.
This webinar, presented by Emily Cambridge from Activate Urban and Jacob Bradbury from Christchurch City Council, takes you on the Christchurch journey towards becoming a cycle friendly city. This includes discussing The Share an Idea campaign which empowered the Christchurch community to share their dreams for the future of the city. The campaign attracted more than 100,000 ideas. The Major Cycleway network emerged as part of the city rebuild blueprint. This programme planned a network with over 100km of separated cycleways along 13 major routes across the city. In 2016, two consultant led consortia were established to complete the route designs. Now with 11 of the 13 routes nearing completion there has been exponential growth of people riding bikes over the past 5 years.
One of the completed routes has seen an average 30% growth in cyclists between 2019 and 2020. Recent surveys with users and residents also show strong support for the facility with 82% of cycle users surveyed stated that the new cycleway has encouraged them to make more trips by bike.
The webinar shares how the design team has progressed through route planning, design team consortia collaboration, construction and will touch on some lessons learnt along the journey.
Head-on crashes are a serious issue in Australia and New Zealand. Head-on crashes result in significantly higher trauma than most other crash types. The provision of an appropriate median or centreline treatment is important to mitigate the risk of head-on crashes.
In this webinar, Dr Rod Troutbeck, Jade Hogan and Jamie Robertson described the range of improvements from supportive treatments like pavement markings and audio-tactile line markings through to the use of flexible barriers in narrow medians as a primary treatment. The discussion and guidance centre on rural two-lane roads but also applicable to all roads. The recommended practices are based on both literature and case studies.
The presenters introduced the crash modification factors developed for the hierarchy of approaches to address head-on crashes and the case studies that support these factors. The optimum solution is to provide a median barrier, however other treatments may be appropriate in certain circumstances depending on considerations including road function, space or resource constraints, and access requirements. The designer should start with the option that has the greatest Safe System alignment. It will need to be demonstrated that this option is not feasible before investigating and selecting an option with lower Safe System alignment are prioritised and other alternatives must be given lower emphasis.
The presenters discussed the implications for road designers including the treatment’s applicability, effectiveness and dimensions. The maintenance considerations and implications for other road users, including sight distance requirements were also discussed.
By applying road safety knowledge to road projects throughout their lifecycle, road safety audits provide greater confidence to road authorities that potential and actual road safety risks are identified and can be mitigated.
Road safety auditors are currently managed individually by state and territory road agencies, leading to variability in training, accreditation, registration, and continuing professional development requirements across Australia and New Zealand.
Austroads members are committed to improving the consistency and quality of road safety audit practices across Australia and New Zealand and have agreed to implement a national framework to manage road safety auditors and road safety audit training providers.
This webinar provided an overview of the national harmonisation project, including why it is needed, the anticipated benefits, what the national framework will look like, as well as project deliverables and timelines.
The webinar was presented by Michael Nieuwesteeg, Chris Koniditsiotis, Andrew Lee and Kellie Houlahan.
There were question and answer opportunities during the session.
The implementation of the National Roadmap on Driver Distraction is a commitment under Australia’s National Road Safety Strategy 2021-2030. Austroads has released a guide for this work and is preparing two research and development projects for delivery over the next financial year.
The webinar presents the guide, the first projects being prepared, and encourage further discussion and ongoing engagement about this important road safety issue.
This webinar is presented by Matin Nabavi, Mike Regan and Martin Small.
The webinar provides an overview of an Austroads project which provided expert technical input into the revision of three Australian Standard test methods (AS 2341.4, AS 2341.15 and AS 2341.27) and three national specification documents (AS 2008, AS 2157, AS 1160) during the period between September 2022 and August 2024. It also includes the results of a laboratory study which investigated whether consistency at 25 °C tests (AS 2341.25) could be replaced by rotational viscosity at 25 °C tests (AS 2341.4) in the bituminous emulsion specification (AS 1160).
As a longstanding authority in verifying drivers’ licences, Austroads is leading Australia’s development of world class solutions that safely and securely support driver licence verification.
As part of the transformative initiative to harmonise Mobile Drivers Licences (mDL) across all jurisdictions, Austroads is establishing a National Digital Trust Service (DTS) enabling mDLs to be securely verified anywhere, at any time.
The first stage of the project, a pre-production version of the DTS, will be powered by MATTR and deliver DTS capabilities that will have the ability to support multiple types of digital credentials. Based on the MATTR VII platform, the DTS will act as the root of trust for the mDL ecosystem across Australia, ensuring that mDLs can be verified regardless of the issuing jurisdiction or location by relying parties anywhere in the world.
This webinar gave an overview of mDLs and the Austroads DTS, presented by Christopher Goh, Austroads’ National Harmonisation Lead – Digital Identity, and representatives from MATTR – Luke McIntyre, Chief Product Officer, and Tobias Looker, Chief Technical Officer.
This is the final webinar in the three-part webinar series to present the outcomes of the Austroads project “Prioritising Active Transport”.
Presenters Dr Elliot Fishman and Andrew Somers focus on various policies and other non-infrastructure interventions that can be used to increase levels of active travel. These interventions include measures such as speed reduction, policies to integrate public transport with walking and cycling, pricing measures for motor vehicle use and parking and shared micromobility programs.
The session also covers how policy and other non-infrastructure interventions perform in terms of their impact on growing active transport mode share, in comparison to the cost and complexity of implementing these initiatives.
This is the second session in a three-part webinar series to present the outcomes of the Austroads project “Prioritising Active Transport”. This webinar builds on the first webinar by focusing on the types of infrastructure interventions that can be used to increase active transport mode share.
Participants will gain an understanding of the effectiveness of these interventions and their suitability, depending on the geographical context (e.g. inner city, suburban, regional).
The webinar is presented by Dr Elliot Fishman and moderated by Andrew Somers.
This webinar was part one of a three-part webinar series to present the outcomes of the Austroads project 'Prioritising Active Transport'.
A wide range of Australian government agencies have a goal to increase the mode share for walking and cycling. Yet much of the data shows that active transport levels have stagnated over the last 15 years. This webinar presented data on Australian and overseas best-practice measures that can be implemented to grow the contribution of walking and cycling to transport systems across Australasia.
Participants learnt about the different categories of interventions that can be used to increase active transport mode share. They also learnt how a prioritisation framework can be used to select interventions that are the most impactful in boosting walking and cycling mode share, while also considering the cost and complexity of different interventions.
The webinar was presented by Dr Elliot Fishman and moderated by Andrew Somers.
Cities throughout the world are recognising many public spaces are not welcoming or inclusive, particularly for women, girls, gender diverse groups and vulnerable people.
This webinar, presented by Anna Chauvel and Richmond Henty, focuses on Canberra's first Gender Sensitive Urban Design Guidelines. The guidelines will help planners, engineers, architects, landscape designers and developers create urban spaces that reflect the needs, interests, and routines of the city’s diverse community, enriching people’s daily lives.
Developed following over two years of community and stakeholder engagement, the guidelines will aid with the design and delivery of public urban spaces as well as transport and infrastructure projects, including wayfinding. The guidelines are one of the actions to come out of the Second Action Plan 2020-22 of the ACT Women’s Plan.
The guidelines will deliver practical outcomes to the daily lives of women, girls, gender diverse and vulnerable people in Canberra improving their safety, access, mobility, health, and enjoyment in public spaces.
Safety is often the first thing that comes to mind when thinking about transport and city planning from a gender perspective, but feeling safe should be the baseline, not the benchmark when it comes to inclusive cities.
From Barcelona’s Superblocks to women’s cycling rates in Copenhagen, through to building women’s autonomy into the business case, this webinar’s presenter Estelle Grech shares key insights from her Churchill Fellowship where she travelled to 14 cities around the globe to research how to design cities for women in girls.
The Austroads Guide to Road Safety Part 2: Safe Roads (AGRS Part 2) and Guide to Road Safety Part 7: Road Safety Strategy and Management (AGRS Part 7) have recently been updated.
AGRS Part 2 is designed to provide all levels of government across Australia and New Zealand with information on the role infrastructure plays in the Safe System. AGRS Part 2 presents guidance on the selection and implementation of infrastructure treatments to reduce road trauma and deliver a zero-harm future. These guidelines cover network risk assessment techniques and present a suite of infrastructure interventions (proven and emerging) that can be implemented to address the key road safety issues on our road networks: high-speed lane departures, intersections, and vulnerable road users. Interventions are categorised using a treatment hierarchy approach aligned with Safe System principles. The Guide contains practical, hands-on advice to help practitioners identify, prioritise, and deliver infrastructure interventions that are aligned with Safe System principles and the contemporary Zero Planning approach to road safety.
The AGRS Part 7 was expanded to include other network-wide concepts and processes, such as Network Safety Planning, Future State Modelling (backcasting) and Movement and Place Frameworks. It also identifies how the different parts/pillars of the Austroads Guide to Road Safety can be used to develop solutions that work towards network aspirations and significantly reduce serious road trauma.
This webinar, presented by Hafez Alavi and Paul Durdin, outlines the key changes to AGRS Part 2 and AGRS Part 7. The content includes examples from both guides that demonstrate how the updated guidance would be practically interpreted by practitioners to deliver treatment outcomes that are more aligned with the Safe System approach.
A large proportion of the road networks in Australia and New Zealand consist of flexible granular pavements protected by sprayed sealing surfacings. An Austroads sprayed seal trial site was established in Coober Pedy in South Australia during 2011 to evaluate the relative performance of seals constructed with different grades of binders from their placement through to long‑term service. The site was constructed to predominantly compare the performance of different Austroads Technical Specification ATS 3110 polymer modified binder (PMB) grades when they were used in strain alleviating membrane (SAM) applications.
This webinar, presented by Steve Patrick and Dr Robert Urquhart, describes the findings obtained from an inspection of the trial site conducted 11 years after construction. The inspection included detailed visual assessments of the condition of each trial section by an expert team. Seal samples were also obtained from the trial sections so that binders could be extracted for rheological and chemical analysis tests. The test results obtained for the extracted binder samples have been used to gain insights into how the properties of the trial binders have changed over time.
The results of the visual assessment work indicated that all sections of the trial site were generally performing well after 11 years of service. Extracted binder sample tests indicated that all binders have become progressively harder over time. The control C170 bitumen section of the trial site has hardened more over time than the sections containing PMBs.
This webinar is aimed at helping local governments (LGs) across Australia and New Zealand navigate the evolving landscape of connected and automated vehicles (CAVs). As managers of a large portion of the road network, LGs play a pivotal role in shaping the future of transport.
This webinar provides an overview of an Austroads project that developed guidance to enhance LGs’ preparedness for CAV integration. The webinar explores ten critical areas essential for LGs seeking to prepare effectively, spanning legal considerations and infrastructure readiness as well as financial impacts and stakeholder engagement. The session will also outline the proposed actions to support current and near-term vehicles with human operators and longer-term, fully automated vehicles.
The webinar also covers a proposed LG CAV Preparedness Framework and an Inflection Point Monitoring tool developed to assist LGs with decision making amidst the evolving landscape of CAV adoption.
The webinar starts by presenting the results of the initial consultation exercise, giving context to the understanding of what LGs considered to be most useful and relevant for their needs. It will then run through an overview of the developed tools and resources.
The webinar is presented by David Yee and Andrew Somers.
For decades, Austroads Guide to Road Design (AGRD) has served as a critical resource for practitioners involved in road planning, design and engineering. Austroads recently completed a strategic review of road design guidance, identifying strategies to sustainably maintain the AGRD as the pre-eminent road design guide in Australia and New Zealand.
Through an online survey and face-to-face interviews, the project team identified opinions and possible strategic actions from users of the AGRD, stakeholders in road design practice and international experts. This webinar describes what the review learned, and the nature of actions proposed to realise identified opportunities.
Webinar presenters, Andrew Somers and Dr Rod Troutbeck, report on the findings of the engagement with the AGRD’s users and non-users. Provided feedback identified that road design must be context-sensitive and Austroads’ road design guidance needs to cover the range of contexts and the application of judgement is a critical part of context-sensitive designs and solutions.
The presenters also explore how changes to structure and content might allow the AGRD to:
- better cover urban environments
- integrate guidance for planning and design
- more effectively promote context-sensitive design practices
- establish clearer links to supporting evidence.
The Department of Transport Western Australia has been working with Western Australian local governments to develop, trial and evaluate ‘safe active streets’ to encourage more people to walk, wheel and ride in their communities.
The pilot program trialled and adapted common local area traffic management treatments to create 30 km/h environments with unique designs created that reflect local community needs and context.
This webinar explores the origins of the program, how and why it started, it will share high-level insights from the evaluation, including what worked, what didn’t and what was learnt along the way. It also shares ‘where to next’ for the program and how this work will be used to inform guidelines to support the delivery of safe active street infrastructure by local government into the future.
The webinar is presented by Caroline Elliott and Helen Ginbey, moderated by Sam Bolton.
This webinar is part of the Cycling and Walking Australia and New Zealand (CWANZ) webinar series. CWANZ is the Australasian lead reference group for walking and bike riding on transport and recreation networks. For further information please visit www.cwanz.com.au
Moisture damage in asphalt (also known as stripping) can significantly reduce the durability and strength of asphalt pavements, often resulting in expensive repairs. Hydrated lime is widely used in Australia to reduce the moisture susceptibility of asphalt mixes in service; however, potentially more sustainable additives (such as liquid anti-stripping agents) are also widely used internationally to reduce the risk of moisture damage in asphalt pavements.
Austroads has completed a project that investigated the use of alternative anti-stripping additives (other than hydrated lime) to reduce the moisture susceptibility of asphalt mixes in service.
An interim laboratory assessment protocol was developed to assess the effectiveness of different anti-stripping additives.
This webinar with Joe Grobler, Dr Chrysoula Pandelidi and Sean Dorahy presents:
- important factors affecting the moisture susceptibility of asphalt mixes
- commonly used moisture susceptibility test methods
- the main benefits and disadvantages of using hydrated lime or liquid anti-stripping agents
- an interim Austroads laboratory assessment protocol to evaluate the effectiveness of different anti-stripping additives.
The National Walking and Cycling Participation Survey is a survey of the Australian community to understand their participation in walking and cycling. The survey has been run every two years since 2011.
Until 2019 the survey was managed by Austroads. 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, CWANZ presented the 2023 National Walking and Cycling Participation Survey, covered its methodology and provided a high-level overview of the results. Presenters also spoke about how the data is used in different states.
Speakers were Cameron Munro, CDM Research, Fiona Goodbody, Department of Transport, Western Australia and Dr Tepi Mclaughlin from University of Western Australia.
Austroads has completed a project to replace the obsolete gyratory compactors used in design and quality control testing of asphalt mixes and update its Guide to Pavement Technology Part 4B: Asphalt.
Austroads asphalt mix design procedure currently relies on Gyropac compaction for volumetric mix design. The discontinuation of the Gyropac compactor has resulted in a significant gap in the Austroads asphalt mix design procedure and created a need for a replacement.
The Austroads Asphalt Research Technical Group has identified the Superpave™ gyratory compactor as the most likely replacement for this gap.
The project team undertook a comprehensive literature review and testing of asphalt mixes to understand the relationship between compaction in Gyropac, Servopac (setup to AS/NZS) and Superpave™ gyratory compactors to allow the adoption of the Superpave™ standard gyratory settings in the Austroads mix design procedure.
This webinar, presented by Dr Bevan Sullivan and Sean Dorahy, provided a detailed overview of the project, including the findings of the literature review and test data. There were question and answer opportunities during the session.
Austroads has completed its update of Section 3: Inspection, Testing, Monitoring and Reporting of the Guide to Bridge Technology Part 7: Maintenance and Management of Existing Bridges.
The project involved taking a fresh look at the inspection process to provide a flexible framework from which users of the Guide can develop and improve their own inspection processes.
The project team undertook an assessment of Australian and New Zealand jurisdictions, as well as some international organisations. The assessment included reviewing the processes and practices and the uses of inspection data collected at each inspection level. This was followed up with a workshop with each individual jurisdiction.
Practices varied across the jurisdictions from basic to advanced levels in terms of programming, data collection, and inspection processes. Similar observations were also made of the international practices assessed. The current practices were also assessed against the existing documentation to quantify gaps within the existing documentation.
With the current range of complexities in systems, data requirements and processes, coupled with the intention of some jurisdictions to change existing practices, it was concluded that a flexible approach is needed within the revised inspection framework to enable varying jurisdictional needs to be accommodated. The fundamentals such as defining inspection types, components and component numbering are documented as a single approach, whilst for other sections, a risk-based framework will be adopted to allow flexibility, such as in assigning inspection timings.
Key updates to the Guide include:
- Condition rating vs defect mapping, allowing flexibility to adopt positions between the two processes.
- Standardisation of bridge and culvert definition.
- A ‘Rosetta stone’ of bridge componentisation, describing the nuances of the different jurisdictions.
- Standardisation of component rating descriptors.
- Reaffirming and refining inspection levels and inspection frequencies.
- Audit, quality control and inspector training.
The webinar will be presented by Andy Ng and Paul Cannons.
This webinar presents the work involved in developing a standardised comparative risk assessment method for assessing life safety risk of dangerous goods being routed through the tunnel or via an alternative surface route. The project was conceived to focus on new road tunnel projects, but the methodology developed could also be used for comparative assessment of alternative surface routes.
Dangerous goods are a wide variety of substances and objects that pose acute risks to people, property, and the environment due to their chemical or physical characteristics. The transport by road of such goods is necessary to achieve broad societal benefits, yet such transport has inherent risk of significant events adversely affecting people (road users, adjacent populations, and responders) and the environment.
The webinar describes the proposed methodology as well as providing a case study application of the methodology to aid practitioners. The session provides a summary of the legal context for undertaking such assessments and the responsibilities that lie with the various stakeholder parties. The authors also present the broader context in which the life safety assessment results should be considered and the other decision-making factors that should be applied.
The webinar is presented by Dr Conrad Stacey and Nigel Casey.
This webinar is hosted with the Digital Atlas of Australia Team and Geoscience Australia. In this session we explore how the Digital Atlas is transforming the way we access and use location data. The team discusses the National Roads dataset – a comprehensive dataset on Australia’s roads, now freely accessible to the public.
The team also talks about the value and insights driven by integrating a national, reliable view of Australia's road networks with other trusted location data.
Over the last decade there has been a trend by a number of governments to invest more heavily in transport infrastructure and systems, and to accelerate programs of work. This has been a response to various ‘burning platforms’ including transport congestion in our major urban areas, fast growing populations, extreme events like flooding, bushfires and earthquakes, and job creation to support economic growth.
While there is an extensive range of advice on project management, there is little written up on how to successfully set-up and accelerate programs of work using the best of project management and governance techniques, particularly in the context of Australian and New Zealand. The Austroads recently complete project aimed to fill this gap by highlighting key things to consider for programs generally up to $500 million from the experience of over 50 experts. A number of case studies are presented to illustrate best practice. This also includes how best practice can be amplified and a culture of continuous improvement can be best established and maintained.
Not surprisingly, the report outlines how successful delivery of accelerated programs is underpinned by sound initial planning, strong governance and leadership, role clarity and an understanding across the team of the importance of the work. Particularly in pressure situations to make ‘things happen’, these things can be forgotten about or not given enough thought and resource. The case studies demonstrate how programs can be accelerated and robust prioritisation, approval and procurement process can still be followed. It just takes a clear focus on the desired outcomes and a strong mandate.
This webinar is presented by Duminda Wijayasinghe, David Silvester and Ray Paterson.
This webinar presents the results of the Austroads project that developed guidelines for incident response vehicles and truck-mounted attenuators. The project was a collaboration between Austroads, iMOVE, Queensland University of Technology and Deakin University.
Two sets of guidelines have been developed as part of the project. The first set provides information on models/types and design specifications of incident response vehicles. The guidance focuses on three vehicle types: tow trucks, truck-mounted attenuators (TMAs) and utility vehicles. In general, the design considerations are separated into three stages: determining models and general specifications, determining additional features and equipment, and determining markings, signs and other identification measures to ensure visibility and identifiability of the incident response vehicles.
The second set provides guidance on when and how TMAs and other attenuator vehicles should be used in incident response scenarios. The use of TMAs for incident response often requires departures from the established guidelines for TMA use, which are generally developed around planned operations (i.e. roadworks and maintenance activities). These issues are addressed alongside related considerations around broader temporary traffic management pertaining to incident response specifically.
In the webinar, presenters Narelle Haworth, Ashim Debnath and Drew Gaynor, provide an overview of the project, including the findings of the literature review, results of the stakeholder consultations and guideline development.
The United Nations Decade of Action for Road Safety 2021-2030 has set the ambitious global target to halve road traffic fatalities and injuries by 2030. Some jurisdictions have set even more ambitious targets by setting a date for achieving zero road trauma, such as by 2050.
While there is a growing body of evidence around what initiatives are effective in reducing road crashes and injuries, what is missing is how to prioritise these measures and a lack of tangible planning frameworks to assist countries to link near- and long-term targets with day-to-day operations.
This webinar explores how to use backcasting, a vision-based planning approach, to determine what the metrics of a safe road system should look like in order to achieve zero road trauma and how the current road system is tracking towards this desired state and how jurisdictions can utilise this approach to develop strategies to achieve their near- and long-term targets.
The webinar is presented by Jessica Truong, the winner of the Women in Road Safety Award presented by Austroads at the 2023 Australasian Road Safety Conference.
Driver licensing legislation and regulation is the responsibility of each of Australia’s 8 states and territories. However, there is a commitment by all jurisdictional regulators to harmonised practices with minimum licensing standards. Under the Austroads registration and licensing taskforce, states and territories agree periodic programs of work to improve licensing practice which recognises emerging research and trends and supports movement towards increasing road safety.
To guide the development of licensing practice in Australia all states and territories have agreed to the five principles of aspirational intent to guide and inform their licensing policy and work programs. This webinar outlines these five principles and describes some of the work currently underway in support of these principles.
The webinar is presented by Judy Oswin who has worked on driver licensing policy as both a state regulator and consultant for over 20 years.
Australia’s Transport Ministers have agreed in-principle to an improved, nationally‑consistent approach to the training and licence progression of heavy vehicle drivers, that improves road safety and productivity.
The in-principle changes were approved by infrastructure and transport ministers in December 2023 through the agreement by the Infrastructure and Transport Ministers Meeting (ITMM) to endorse the National Heavy Vehicle Driver Competency Framework Decision Regulation Impact Statement (Decision RIS).
The changes are designed to increase the safety and job‑readiness of heavy vehicle drivers.
Austroads will develop best-practice standards and training material to support consistent delivery of the enhanced heavy vehicle competencies and assessments.
Austroads will work with each state and territory government and the different industries to fully scope the implementation program, identify policy, service and stakeholder issues and options, and seek to collaboratively develop a coordinated plan to deliver the anticipated safety and productivity benefits of the reform.
In this webinar, Paul Davies, Austroads General Manager Programs, explains the changes in detail.
How do drivers respond to the iconic tunnel design features included in the NorthConnex road tunnel project? What were the objectives of the designs and have the designs achieved these objectives? How do the designs affect driver behaviour?
The webinar explains the two key elements of this work – the validation of the UNSW driving simulator as a means of assessing road tunnel design features, and the use of that simulator to test driver response to the design features included in NorthConnex. The presenters explains the logic of the trial methodology, whereby the driving behaviour of trial participants was assessed in the actual tunnel as well as in the simulated tunnel – the latter both with the design features included and with the features excluded.
The work sought to determine whether the design features enhanced the driver experience without an adverse effect on safety. The work demonstrates that the driving simulator is a valid tool for assessing tunnel design features and therefore provides a platform to inform design features in new tunnels but also a tool to assess how such designs may help to mitigate operational issues in existing tunnels.
The webinar is presented by Prof Michael (Mike) Regan, Dr Prasannah Prabhakharan, Julius Secadiningrat, Jack Mazaraki, Nicholas Rozenauers, Nigel Casey and Richard Merrett.
The Department of Infrastructure, Planning and Logistics held a webinar on the 16 November 2023 to update industry on the Northern Territory’s transition to the National Training Framework Temporary Traffic Management (NTFTTM). Industry and individuals currently working in Temporary Traffic Management roles, or associated with the Temporary Traffic Management industry were encouraged to attend to understand the changes being implemented in February 2024. Transitional arrangements being implemented by the Department with the intention of minimising the impact to industry, were explained for existing Northern Territory Work Zone Traffic Management qualifications transitioning to the national training.
The webinar was presented by Bob Pemble, Patsy Thomas and Sean Stieber. There were question and answer opportunities during the session.
Austroads has developed an extended vehicle classification scheme (EVCS) to enable improved understanding and monitoring of the evolving vehicle mix on Australian and New Zealand roads in traffic and transport surveys. This builds upon the existing 1994 vehicle classification scheme.
The EVCS provides greater granularity for each of the existing 12 classes of vehicles and adds a new class for active transport to address the need to count a variety of active transport users such as pedestrians, skateboards and e-scooters.
The EVCS will allow transport agencies to better manage transport demand within and between modes, survey active transport and understand how demands integrate with other modes.
The scheme will help identify changes in transport operational performance and optimise plans for effective access management and asset maintenance.
This webinar is the third session in a three-webinar series, and it will focus on measuring active transport. The first webinar covered heavy vehicles and the third session discussed the changes to light vehicles.
This webinar, presented by Drew Gaynor and David Johnston, focuses on active transport and discusses:
- the creation of level 3 class 20
- the greater granularity in level 4 subclasses
- emerging challenges in categorising class 20 elements
- the use of alternative counting technologies.
Austroads has developed an extended vehicle classification scheme (EVCS) to enable improved understanding and monitoring of the evolving vehicle mix on Australian and New Zealand roads in traffic and transport surveys. This builds upon the existing 1994 vehicle classification scheme.
The EVCS provides greater granularity for each of the existing 12 classes of vehicles and adds a new class for active transport to address the need to count a variety of active transport users such as pedestrians, skateboards and e-scooters.
The EVCS will allow transport agencies to better manage transport demand within and between modes, survey active transport and understand how demands integrate with other modes.
The scheme will help identify changes in transport operational performance and optimise plans for effective access management and asset maintenance.
This webinar, presented by Drew Gaynor and David Johnston, is the second session in a three-webinar series, and it focuses on the changes to light vehicles. The first webinar covered heavy vehicles and the third session will provide information on measuring active transport.
This webinar discusses:
- level 3 classes 1 and 2
- the greater granularity in level 4 subclasses
- thresholds between classes 2 and 3
- the use of alternative counting technologies.
Austroads has developed an extended vehicle classification scheme (EVCS) to enable improved understanding and monitoring of the evolving vehicle mix on Australian and New Zealand roads in traffic and transport surveys. This builds upon the existing 1994 vehicle classification scheme.
The EVCS provides greater granularity for each of the existing 12 classes of vehicles and adds a new class for active transport to address the need to count a variety of active transport users such as pedestrians, skateboards and e-scooters.
The EVCS will allow transport agencies to better manage transport demand within and between modes, survey active transport and understand how demands integrate with other modes.
The scheme will help identify changes in transport operational performance and optimise plans for effective access management and asset maintenance.
This webinar, presented by Drew Gaynor and David Johnston, is the first session in a three-webinar series, and it focuses on the changes to heavy vehicles. The second webinar will cover light vehicles and the third session will provide information on measuring active transport.
This webinar discusses:
- level 3 classes 3 to 12
- the greater granularity in level 4 subclasses
- better description of axle groupings
- the creation of a new class 19 for heavy vehicles that do not fit readily into the prescribed classifications
- backward compatibility with existing heavy vehicles counting
- further validation of some sections.
In this session, we will present a comprehensive report that identifies and explores those physical infrastructure practices that matter most to CAVs. Just like human drivers, CAVs need to understand line and pavement markings, electronic and non-electronic signs, and traffic signals. Computer sensing and computer processing, however, differ to humans, and differ between different and evolving systems used in Active Safety Systems (ASS), Advanced Driver Assistance Systems (ADAS), and Automated Driving Systems (ADS).
Drawing insights from a review of Austroads publications and latest research, this webinar uncovers the latest industry knowledge and physical infrastructure requirements. Discover the latest practices and standards, and where clear agreements have emerged, recommendations for effective changes will be unveiled. Furthermore, we examine areas where further study, monitoring, and industry engagement are needed, ensuring a holistic approach to accommodating future developments.
This webinar helps agency decision-makers preparing for future physical infrastructure CAV support practices. The knowledge presented in this report is based on robust evidence and expert opinions, providing a snapshot of the current landscape while remaining adaptable to the evolving CAV industry and its technological advancements.
Supplements have provided important additional guidance to the Austroads Guide to Road Design (Guide). But there are questions about their use. Are these supplements needed? What should they contain? Should the information in the agency supplements be included in the Guide? These questions were addressed in a recently completed Austroads project that undertook a detailed review of jurisdictional supplements to the Guide.
This webinar describes the classification of material in the jurisdictional supplements to establish guidance that could be moved into the Guide.
The sessions focuses on a cross-jurisdictional platform for managing supplements within a jurisdiction and moving information from supplements to the Guide. The platform was developed with the input from the Project Control Group and the Road Design Task Force represented by Australian and New Zealand road agencies, and the Australian Local Government Association.
The platform uses a ‘push-pull” approach where Austroads looks to ‘pull’ information from the supplements, and the road agencies look for a means to ‘push’ information into the Guide. This approach aims to assist in minimising supplement content and harmonising material in the Guide.
The webinar was presented by Dr Rod Troutbeck, Dr Hafez Alavi, Mark Lenske and Phil Rosser.
Following previous workforce capability studies undertaken in 2006, 2009, 2013 and 2017, Austroads engaged Oxford Economics Australia to undertake a new workforce capability analysis for member authorities based on planned and forecasted infrastructure development and service objective requirements in Australia and New Zealand over the next 10 years to 2032.
Through stakeholder and industry engagement – as well as gap analysis including extensive data analytics – this analysis seeks to explain how skills demand will form for road agencies over the coming decade, what will be the key threats to workforce capability in the roads sector, and what road agencies can do to respond to the challenges ahead.
The study identifies which jurisdictions are expected to experience capability gaps in the next five years and stresses the importance of implementing measures to attract and retain skills, particularly given competitive threats from rising activity in other sectors over the coming decade.
New to this iteration of the study is the provision of quantitative data through interactive dashboards which allow users to focus on specific skills and occupation profiles in each jurisdiction. These dashboards will be updated with new workforce data and forecasts through 2024 and 2025.
This webinar, presented by Adrian Hart and Thomas Creevey from Oxford Economics Australia, provides a summary of the results and findings of this research. The session covers the following:
- current breakdowns of the roads skilled workforce in Australia and New Zealand
- state of play and outlook for roads activities and skills demand
- insights from industry survey and interviews on existing capability concerns
- how the roads industry can respond positively to the workforce skills challenge
- what information the new dashboards contain and how they work.
For over a decade, the National Telematics Framework has been setting a benchmark as an effective regulatory framework for optimised vehicle movements, making Australia a world-leader in intelligent access management.
The National Telematics Framework (Framework) was established following a series of decisions made by ministers between 2003 and 2008 and was globally recognised as an International Standard (ISO 15638) in 2012.
Supporting an open marketplace of telematics and related intelligent technology providers, the Framework consists of a common set of infrastructure and rules administered by the Transport Certification Australia (TCA) on behalf of the Australian Government.
The Framework provides an ecosystem to manage relationships and interactions between producers, providers, and consumers. Encouraging innovation and competition, it enables a market of certified services and type-approved hardware from multiple telematics providers. This provides assurance to the road managers and regulators as they manage vehicle access on the road network for improved efficiency, safety and protection of critical infrastructure.
The Framework is recognised as world’s best practice and has been referenced by other countries as they navigate similar complexities around compliance, asset protection and community benefits.
This webinar is beneficial to practitioners and policy makers within the transport industry. It provides useful insights for the development of future vehicle management programs and shares practical lessons around the implementation of complex regulatory frameworks.
Road users in regional and remote Australia are at a greater risk of road trauma than those living in major cities. Approximately one third of Australians live in regional or remote areas but two thirds of fatal crashes occur in these areas. The fatality rate in regional and remote areas is 12.2 deaths per 100,000 population and increases to 34.6 deaths per 100,000 in very remote areas. The former figure is almost five times greater than the rate for major cities which is 2.6 deaths per 100,000 population.
Austroads has completed a project to provide information on known effective road safety interventions for regional and remote areas.The information is presented in two reports. The first is the research report and the second report, which is based on the research report, is a shorter practitioner-focussed report which provides succinct and easy-to-access information via factsheets on evidence-based effective interventions, a prioritisation framework, and evaluation framework.
The evidence-based findings from this project provide practical guidance for practitioners to effectively select, prioritise, implement and evaluate interventions to prevent road fatalities and serious injuries in regional and remote areas.
This webinar provides a background to and overview of the project; highlights from the literature review; an overview of the factsheets and how they have been structured; a summary of the prioritisation framework and its application; and a summary of the evaluation framework and its application.
The webinar is presented by Dr Tana Tan, Dr Lisa Wundersitz and Dr Chris Stokes.
Information on injurious road crashes is required for prevention. National information on fatal cases has been available for many years, but information on serious non-fatal cases has been lacking. This webinar will take participants through the outcomes of Stage 2 of an Austroads project commissioned to establish a system to report serious injury cases due to road crashes in a consistent way throughout Australia and over time.
Stage 2 aimed to obtain ten years of data from all jurisdictions (2008 to 2017), report against equivalents to the NRSS fatality indicators and analyse characteristics of the data, including matched and unmatched cases, cross-border flows, and the impact of data linkage on estimates. Ethics and data custodian approvals enabled data to be collected from all jurisdictions except Western Australia.
Information on injurious road crashes is required for prevention. National information on fatal cases has been available for many years, but information on serious non-fatal cases has been lacking.
Webinar presenters Professor James Harrison and Associate Professor Angela Watson explain the method used in Stage 2 of the project and provide a detailed overview of the project findings.
Between December 2023 and September 2024, Telstra, Optus and Vodafone will close their 3G networks to make room for new, faster services. The 3G network shutdown will affect vital equipment and services across the road transport sector.
Devices that rely on 3G will no longer function and need to be upgraded or replaced to continue operating. Commonly affected devices include:
- telematics and vehicle/asset tracking devices installed in heavy and light vehicles, as well as general assets such as trailers, generators, etc.
- traffic management signs used in school zones, intersections and freeways
- weather systems and stations
- alarms/building entry
- devices that incorporate gateway or mesh backhaul
- personal Emergency Response (PER) systems
- phones and tablets.
Businesses, government, and industry are being urged to commence their transition immediately to avoid lapses in vital equipment and services across the road transport sector. Early transition and planning are vital given the large number of devices affected by the shutdown. The migration process can take months, and timing is dependent on the number of affected devices and the availability of installers.
New Zealand is also shutting down their 3G network. The country will close their services between August next year and the end of 2025.
This webinar, organised by Austroads and Transport Certification Australia (TCA), provides high-level information on the impacts of the Australian 3G shutdown and what local government and transport industry need to do to prepare for the transition.
Presenters are David McIntosh, Telstra’s National Telematics Domain Lead, Michael Reynolds, Head of Network Products, Programs and Services at Optus, Mark Joselin, Followmont Transport Compliance Manager, Adam Ritzinger, Chief Technical Officer at Heavy Vehicle Industry Australia, and John Gordon, Manager Strategic Development at TCA.
Transport for NSW (TfNSW) is transitioning from Interim On-Board Mass (OBM) management to Smart OBM. All Performance Based Standards (PBS) vehicle operators with mass monitoring as a condition of access will need to transition to the more advanced telematics technology by 1 June 2024.
Smart OBM systems capture axle mass measurements as digital records and share the data with relevant road managers in a secure and standardised way.
The changes aim to harmonise the use of Smart OBM systems for mass monitoring of heavy vehicles in New South Wales with other states.
The changes will require the operators of eligible PBS vehicles to have Smart OBM systems fitted to their vehicles. Additionally, those vehicles must be enrolled in an applicable scheme of the Telematics Monitoring Application (TMA), and their Smart OBM systems paired with an Application Service Provider (ASP) certified by Transport Certification Australia (TCA).
This webinar provides an overview of the upcoming changes and how they will affect PBS drivers travelling to and within the state.
Webinar attendees are taken through the steps required for signing up to Smart OBM or transitioning from Interim OBM to Smart OBM.
Presenters also talk about the importance of Smart OBM for the road network and how mass data from Smart OBM is being used by road managers.
The session is beneficial to PBS operators who operate their fleet in NSW or travel across the border, ASPs seeking information to update their customers and road authorities looking to better understand the use of Smart OBM data.
The webinar is presented by Gavin Hill, General Manager of Strategy and Delivery at TCA, and Brett Graham, Senior Manager for Road Access at TfNSW.
The asphalt industry is rapidly evolving, and it is widely accepted that prescriptive specifications are not necessarily well suited to take full advantage of the benefits that new and innovative technologies can provide. There is therefore a desire to develop a national performance-based asphalt specification that would allow asset owners and asphalt suppliers to take full advantage of the enhanced performance characteristics of current and emerging asphalt technologies.
This webinar, presented by Joe Grobler, provides an overview of a recently completed Austroads project undertaken to harmonise test methods used in asphalt performance specifications. The project developed three new Austroads asphalt test methods and updated several existing methods for use in future performance-based specifications.
The project also collated available flexural modulus, fatigue resistance and permanent deformation resistance test data of locally manufactured asphalt mixes to inform the future development of these performance limits.
The presenter talks about the background to the new test methods and the indicative performance limits established for modulus, fatigue and permanent deformation resistance.
This work builds on the results of the previous Austroads project that developed a national performance-based asphalt specification framework.
Trials of automated vehicle (AV) technology are undertaken to research and develop the technology, understand the supporting regulatory and operational frameworks required, and prepare for wide-scale adoption of the technology. Governments across Australia and New Zealand have expressed an interest in maximising the value of trials through improved evaluation and knowledge sharing. To meet this need, Austroads has prepared guidance for the evaluation and reporting of AV trials. This guidance seeks to improve consistency in evaluation and reporting as an enabler and contributor to improved knowledge sharing across jurisdictions.
The guidelines set out the three key stages associated with evaluation and reporting. The scoping and planning stage helps with understanding the objectives and purpose of the trial and the associated evaluation, along with developing a plan to reach the evaluation objectives. For the conducting stage, guidance is provided on undertaking the trial, based on the trial plan, with necessary adjustments, to gather and analyse findings. Finally for the reporting and dissemination stage, the guidelines provide advice on reporting on the key findings from the evaluation and disseminating the report broadly.
Austroads has recently completed a project to identify best practice for road tunnel wall panels and finishes to ensure the products achieve performance, access, maintenance, and durability requirements. The best practice research provided through this project aims to add value to tunnel operators over the life cycle of the assets by facilitating ease of maintenance access for regular inspections, and meeting durability requirements.
In this webinar, Tony Peglas and Georgia O’Connor gave an overview of the research undertaken into best practice solutions for road tunnel wall panels and finishes, including outcomes of the stakeholder consultation, a detailed current practice review, a literature review, and the development of specification framework.
The Design Vehicles and Turning Path Templates Guide has been restructured as part of the update of the Guide to Road Design Part 4. This webinar, presented by Noel O’Callaghan and Malcolm Mak, is the fourth session in a four-part series to provide an overview of the update.
The session focuses on new guidance added to the Design Vehicles and Turning Path Templates Guide covering design vehicles versus checking vehicles, performance-based standards, clearances between swept paths, software parameters and a new design vehicle for a passenger vehicle towing a trailer.
Austroads’ recent project has updated the Guide to Road Design (AGRD) Part 4 series. This webinar is the third in a four-part series to provide an overview of the project, including the aim, research background, methodology and outcomes.
This session, presented by Noel O’Callaghan and Malcolm Mak, explains how to implement the changes in AGRD parts 4B and 4C, including mini and radial roundabouts, cyclist treatments, ramp cross section, entry and exit ramps, sight distance, grade separated intersections.
Can motorcycle protective clothing really prevent serious injuries in motorcycle crashes?
Over the past 20 years there have been great advances in the technology of impact and abrasion resistant materials and yet many of the garments currently available will fail under average crash conditions or are too hot to be worn in warm climates. In the absence of effective standards, motorcyclists have had to rely on advertising, brand name or price when buying protective garments.
This webinar traces the research process and evidence that has resulted in the development of an independent testing program to inform consumers as to the performance of currently available motorcycle jackets, pants and gloves. The researchers have also developed a guide for the manufacturers of PPE to ensure their products are fit for purpose.
This webinar describes the mechanisms and limits of motorcyclist’s protective clothing, the prevalence and types of injuries, the limitations of standards, the challenges to manufacturers and road authorities in factoring motorcycle PPE into a safe system.
The webinar is presented by Dr Liz de Rome, the winner of the Women in Road Safety Award presented by Austroads at the 2022 Australasian Road Safety Conference.
The current learner approved motorcycle scheme (LAMS) was introduced in NSW in 2002 to replace the 250cc engine capacity limit for novice riders (i.e., those on learner and provisional licenses) as race replica 250cc motorcycles were over-represented in fatal and serious injury (FSI) crashes. It was subsequently adopted by VIC, QLD, SA, NT, WA, TAS, and New Zealand, albeit with some amendments in some jurisdictions. A formal review of the LAMS has not been performed since its introduction.
This webinar was presented by Dr Tana Tan and provided an overview of the Austroads project that reviewed the LAMS with the aim of bringing it up to date with the latest research and information and ensuring it provides optimal safety outcomes for novice motorcycle riders.
In this episode, Dr Tana Tan and Dr Mario Mongiardini are joined by Jason MacPherson (who moderates the live Q+A) to provide a detailed overview of the findings of Austroads' recent research report, Motorcycle Rider Perceptive Countermeasures.
Listen, subscribe and head to the Austroads website to find out about how you can register to come to one of our webinars live. Registration is free.
Austroads’ recent project has updated the Guide to Road Design (AGRD) Part 4 series. This webinar is the second in a four-part series to provide an overview of the project, including the aim, research background, methodology and outcomes.
This session explains how to implement the changes in the AGRD parts 4 and 4A, including pedestrian and railway crossings, horizontal alignment, sight distance, auxiliary lanes, truck acceleration lanes, right turn and left turn treatments.
The webinar is presented by Noel O’Callaghan and Malcolm Mak.
Austroads’ recent project has updated the Guide to Road Design (AGRD) Part 4 series. This webinar is the first in a four-part series to provide an overview of the project, including the aim, research background, methodology and outcomes.
The session outlines the new concepts and content that have been included in AGRD parts 4, 4A, 4B, 4C and the Austroads Design Vehicles and Turning Path Templates Guide.
The webinar is presented by Noel O’Callaghan and Malcolm Mak.
This webinar is beneficial to consultants who may be interested in tendering for Austroads projects. The session covers new Austroads projects lined up for the 2023-24 financial year, Austroads process around research data collection and what is required to become a successful tenderer.
To find information about Austroads' current tenders, visit the tenders webpage. On that page, you can also subscribe to our Tenders newsletter to receive alerts when a new project is advertised.
Austroads has developed a set of reference architecture models, content and guidance for use by road agencies to identify, plan and improve their multimodal incident management (MMIM) capabilities. MMIM is the resolution of an unplanned incident that negatively impacts, or has the potential to impact, the normal operation of more than one transport mode. MMIM aims to maintain transport services and minimise journey disruptions in day-to-day transport operations. It involves a coordinated response from multiple road and public transport operators to resolve incidents and restore the transport network to normal operating conditions.
The reference architectures presented in this webinar covers two high-priority topic areas identified by Austroads members: Situational Awareness Tool (SAT) and a MMIM system, which are closely related. A SAT is an information system that provides road and public transport network monitoring and incident detection. A MMIM system is an information system that supports the management and resolution of detected incidents with its operational partners across the road and public transport network. Both systems are defined using a series of outputs that describe the required business architecture and information system aspects of each topic. Agencies are expected to adopt and adapt the architectures to suit their existing environments.
The webinar was presented by David Yee and Andrew Somers. There were question and answer opportunities during the session.
In this webinar, Chris Koniditsiotis, Lead Implementation Consultant and Patsy Thomas, National Temporary Traffic Management (TTM) Operations Manager provide an update on the implementation and operational commencement of the Austroads National Harmonisation of Temporary Traffic Management Practice including:
- National Training Framework for TTM
- Austroads and jurisdictional adoption
- National Registration Framework for TTM
- Austroads IT Registry system allowing online electronic management of entities, individuals, and qualifications.
Austroads has recently completed a project to identify best-practice guidance for the design, delivery and testing of in-tunnel aesthetic design features, with the aspirations to improve tunnel safety and customer experience.
Through the review of recent tunnel projects, current literature and practices, a definition was developed for in-tunnel aesthetic design features and a best-practice process through which in-tunnel aesthetic design features are designed, delivered, and tested.
This webinar with Warwick Keating and John Birch provides an overview of the findings of this project and the best practice methodology which should be considered when planning, designing, procuring, operating and maintaining in-tunnel aesthetic design features.
Listen to the latest episode of Roads Australia's podcast with Dr Sarah Jones, who is Project Director for the implementation of Austroads' Road Asset Data Standard (RADS). Data offers a world of opportunity to underpin the delivery of transport services that are more aligned with customer experiences. When it comes to the management of transport infrastructure and assets, data is a powerful tool that lets us plan and deliver those activities more effectively. However, all of this relies on interoperability. If systems can’t ‘talk’ to each other, we will miss out on productivity, safety and custom experience benefits. This episode covers why data standards matter and explores some of the work Austroads has been doing to prepare and implement a data standard for the national road network. More from the Hub Podcast.
The Austroads mechanistic-empirical design system documented in Part 2 of the Guide to Pavement Technology uses a laboratory fatigue relationship previously developed by Shell to predict the fatigue life of asphalt layers. The Shell fatigue relationship was developed over 40 years ago based on testing a selection of asphalt mixes from Europe and the USA. The mixes used to develop the original relationship are therefore unlikely to represent the modulus and fatigue behaviour of modern mixes (including mixes incorporating recycled materials) currently being used in Australia and New Zealand.
Austroads project Asphalt Laboratory Fatigue Relationship – Stage 1 Utilisation of Existing Data benchmarked available fatigue laboratory test results of locally manufactured asphalt mixes against the fatigue performance predicted by the generic Austroads fatigue relationship. The project also reviewed some important modulus and fatigue testing parameters that may affect the design of asphalt layers, including different sample preparation methods and the minimum number of test specimens required to develop a laboratory fatigue relationship.
This webinar with Joe Grobler, Dr Negin Zhalehjoo and Peter Bryant, presents the findings of the project, including the preliminary fatigue relationships developed for locally manufactured asphalt mixes with conventional (unmodified) bitumen.
The Department of Transport and Planning Victoria has announced 30 June 2023 as the final deadline to have smart on-board mass (OBM) systems fitted to certain high productivity freight vehicles (HPFVs).
Beyond this date, the mass limits of the below classes of vehicles will be restricted if not fitted with Smart OBM:
- vehicles more than 26m in length, with a Gross Combination Mass (GCM) in excess of 68.5 tonnes
- quad-axle semi-trailers with a GCM in excess of 46.0 tonnes
This webinar, presented by Gavin Hill and Ian Mond, covers:
- the changes and how they will affect transport operators traveling in/to Victoria
- the steps required for signing up to Smart OBM
- the importance of Smart OBM for the Victorian road network
- the ways mass data from Smart OBM is being used by road managers.
Road deterioration (RD) models help in predicting future road condition and assessing maintenance needs. Austroads’ recent project updated the current Austroads RD models using the additional long-term pavement performance (LTPP) and long-term pavement performance maintenance (LTPPM) data as well as other available data, such as the traffic speed deflectometer (TSD) datasets, to improve these models’ explanatory power to support wider loading and the climate conditions observed in Australia. The updated and improved RD models can predict the impact of the wider loading and climate conditions observed in Australia.
The project produced four Austroads publications covering the updated RD models for cracking, strength (deflection), rutting and roughness. The project was managed in conjunction with the technical support of a Project Working Group sourced from industry and the road agencies. In addition, expert advice was sought from acknowledged experts in industry and academia.
Each of the reports documented a literature review of the state-of-the-art in deterioration modelling, a review of the available datasets for each of the RD models, the approach used to update each of the RD models and the validation of the rutting and roughness RD models.
This webinar with Dr Tim Martin, Ranita Sen and Tyrone Toole presents an overview of the methodology used to achieve the above objectives and the outcomes of the project.
The session covers:
- the basis for using the LTPP and LTPPM datasets for updating the RD models, including use of the TSD automatic crack detection (ACD) device data specifically for the update of the RD model for cracking
- the methodology adopted for updating the RD models
- validation of the rutting and roughness RD models.
The webinar showcases the projects recognised with the Austroads Bridge Awards. The Austroads Bridge Awards acknowledge individuals and organisations that have delivered outstanding bridge structures and design across Australia and New Zealand.
The awards were presented at the 11th Austroads Bridge Conference held in Adelaide from 15 to 18 November 2022 proudly co-hosted by Austroads and the Department for Infrastructure and Transport South Australia.
The award-winning projects are:
Excellence in Innovation: InQuik Australia, Toorale Bridge Project
Submitted by InQuik, Alluvium Consulting Australia, and Pensar Infrastructure Group. Presented by Logan Mullaney, Managing Director of InQuik.
Excellence in Asset Management: Auckland Harbour Bridge Emergency Repairs
Submitted by Beca, WSP, SRG Global, Waka Kotahi NZ Transport Agency, and ASM Fulton Hogan-HEB Joint Venture. Presented by Will Pank, Technical Director – Structural Engineering, Beca.
Best Structure 35 metres or under: Hay Street Bridge Vertical Clearance Improvement Project
Submitted by BG&E, Bocol Constructions, MACA, and Main Roads Western Australia. Presented by BG&E’s Technical Director-Bridges Graeme Dundas, and WA - Bridge Lead Erica Smith.
Best Structure over 35 metres: Mandurah Bridge
Submitted by BG&E, Georgiou Group, Main Roads Western Australia, and City of Mandurah.
Presented by Boris Vujovic, BG&E’ Technical Director.
This is the second webinar in a two-webinar series. The session describes two case studies in the use of machine learning (ML) and artificial intelligence (AI) to create decision-support tools for pavement asset management.
In the first study, we explore whether ML can learn to reproduce expert treatment decisions and automatically identify candidate projects, using historic condition, treatment and inventory data.
In the second study, we explore extensions to conventional Pavement Management System (PMS) optimisation tools which provide insight into the network-wide implications of various multi-criteria funding allocation scenarios, and the levels of service that can potentially be realised.
The webinar is presented by Tim Cross and David Rawlinson.
The Queensland Department of Transport and Main Roads has announced upcoming changes which will harmonise the use of National Telematics Framework applications for heavy vehicles in Queensland with other jurisdictions.
These changes will include transitioning the subject vehicles from the:
- Intelligent Access Program (IAP) to the Telematics Monitoring Application (TMA)
- Interim On-Board Mass (OBM) Solution to Smart On-Board Mass (Smart OBM)
This webinar, presented by Gavin Hill from TCA and Mark Mitchell from the Queensland Department of Transport and Main Roads, provides an overview of the changes covering:
- the use of the National Telematics Framework to improve road outcomes
- the differences between IAP and TMA
- what’s behind the change
- what you need to know about the 18-month transition
Austroads has published practical guidance to help expand the use of artificial intelligence (AI) and machine learning (ML) in pavement asset management. AI/ML projects are notoriously prone to failure, including late or incomplete delivery, or even being abandoned without useful outcomes.
This webinar, presented by Tim Cross and David Rawlinson, is the first one in a two-webinar series. It describes the tips, tricks and success strategies we have found to avoid the common pitfalls and ensure AI/ML projects proceed to delivery and successful integration with existing business processes. The presenters introduce a Quick Reference document to help practitioners in their projects, and provide practical examples to explain how to use it.
This webinar focuses on the Austroads report Passenger Cars and other Non-truck Tyres Crumb Rubber in Asphalt: National Market Analysis, Review of Industry Practices and Technology Transfer.
The report provides a comprehensive overview of the fate and availability of end-of-life tyres from other-than-truck sources, such as passenger car tyres and mining and agricultural tyres, for road paving operations.
The webinar, presented by Anna D'Angelo from the Australian Flexible Pavement Association and Associate Professor Filippo Giustozzi from RMIT, discusses the market-readiness of Australia and New Zealand to use recycled crumb rubber in asphalt from a variety of end-of-life tyres rather than a single source (i.e. truck tyres).
The session provides information on the current tyre recycling industry across Australia and New Zealand and the evaluation of potential technological opportunities to produce crumb rubber in both countries.
In response to feedback provided by industry and stakeholders, Austroads has reviewed its Guide to Road Design Part 5: Drainage – General and Hydrology Considerations.
The improved guidance responds to the implications for road authority and consulting engineering practices arising from the 2019 update of the Australian Rainfall and Runoff document.
This is the second webinar in a two-webinar series, and it covers the improvements made to the Regional Flood Frequency Estimation (RFFE) method.
The following is discussed in the session:
- Background to the RFFE method
- Recent improvements to the RFFE method
- Worked examples
- Limitations of RFFE and how to assess the quality of the answers produced
The webinar is presented by WMAwater’s Managing Director Mark Babister and William Weeks, currently a private consultant and former Director - Hydraulics and Flooding for the Queensland Department of Transport and Main Roads.
The use of reclaimed asphalt pavement (RAP) in new asphalt mixes is a common practice in Australia and New Zealand due to its many benefits. RAP contents are typically about 10–20% but higher contents can be used, if the effect of the aged binders present in RAP is accounted for. Rejuvenators can be used to soften the hardened binders which are present in RAP, and are therefore considered an essential component for producing high-content RAP mixes.
Although Australian and New Zealand asphalt producers acknowledge the importance of rejuvenators (in particular when producing high RAP mixes), rejuvenators are not commonly used due to the lack of specifications/guidelines that can evaluate the potential performance of rejuvenators when used in RAP mixes. To address this issue, Austroads has developed a rejuvenator evaluation protocol. In this protocol, rejuvenators are evaluated as part of binder blends, and their short/long-term ageing resistance is assessed to ensure their performance at the production stage as well as during service in the long term.
This webinar with Young Choi, Robert Busuttil and Robert Urquhart presents the proposed protocol and its development work. The development work involved a literature review into international rejuvenator specifications and research studies, in particular those which investigated the effect of rejuvenator properties on the properties/ performance of asphalt binders and mixes.
The development work involved obtaining feedback from Austroads technical group members and international experts. These studies were conducted to ensure that the evaluation protocol is robust and practical.
The webinar also covers a plan for future validation studies which will ensure that the protocol is suitable for use in Australia and New Zealand.
In response to feedback provided by industry and stakeholders, Austroads has reviewed its Guide to Road Design Part 5: Drainage – General and Hydrology Considerations.
The improved guidance responds to the implications for road authority and consulting engineering practices arising from the 2019 update of the Australian Rainfall and Runoff document.
This webinar is the first in a two-webinar series and it provides an update on the changes to the Austroads Guide to Road Design Part 5. The session focuses on Section 6 and covers the other changes. The following is covered in the session:
- Change in terminology – from average recurrence interval (ARI) to annual exceedance probability (AEP)
- Why Rational Method is no longer suitable for most cross-drainage applications
- What Rational Method is suited for (primarily longitudinal road drainage)
- An introduction to alternative flow estimation techniques (incl. regional flood frequency estimation (RFFE))
- Rare and extreme events
- Flood impacts/tunnel portals
- Safety in design
- Joint probability and uncertainty
The webinar is presented by WMAwater’s Managing Director Mark Babister and William Weeks, currently a private consultant and former Director – Hydraulics and Flooding for the Queensland Department of Transport and Main Roads.
Road safety barriers are a critical component of a safe road transport system and are saving lives and preventing serious injuries every day across Australian and New Zealand roads. To ensure they deliver their intended safety outcomes and manage the extreme forces involved in high-speed crashes, barriers must be correctly installed and maintained.
This webinar with Michael Nieuwesteeg and Chris Koniditsiotis from Austroads, Robert Tabor and Stephanie Craig from Lantra, Jade Hogan from Transport for NSW and Evan Coulson from the Department of Transport Victoria presents the Austroads Safety Hardware Training and Accreditation Scheme (ASHTAS), which delivers a high standard and nationally consistent set of training outcomes for individuals installing and maintaining road safety barriers in Australia and New Zealand.
ASHTAS responds to Austroads members, along with the road safety barrier industry, who have been concerned about the quality of installation of road safety barriers which may put the safety of the public and road workers at risk.
Austroads is undertaking a multi-stage project to support road transport and traffic agencies across Australia to manage the impacts of third-party assets on the successful delivery of road infrastructure projects, including road projects with a rail interface. To form an effective, evidence-based strategy and action plan, the project included international literature research, jurisdictional consultation and four road infrastructure project case studies.
This webinar with Robert Eames, Nicola Boyd, David Bourne and Maria Drysdale presents the research findings and where change is required to improve the efficient delivery of major infrastructure projects when third-party assets are involved. One key element proposed is a national minimum dataset of information to monitor third-party impacts on road infrastructure projects.
The collection and reporting of high-quality data is essential but depends on stakeholders sharing cost information so that value-based decisions can be made across the whole project. Measurement of costs associated with utilities on projects will permit analysis of past events which will lead to two beneficial outcomes:
- Understanding events and determining patterns will enable predictions of the future to be made.
- Quantitative evaluation of past project events will allow plans for improvement to be developed.
Austroads has completed its project APT6305 Use of Road-grade Recycled Plastics for Sustainable Asphalt Pavements which was investigating road-grade recycled plastics that can be used to construct and maintain asphalt roads.
The project results are provided in four 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.
Report 3 Part A presented the results of the experimental investigation on recycled plastics in asphalt and bitumen by focusing on the asphalt and bitumen properties, microplastics and emissions. The report focused on the wet and dry method of incorporation of plastics into asphalt.
This 75-minute webinar focuses on Part B of the third report outlining the mixed methods (i.e., low melting point plastics as additive to modify asphalt) performance and environmental assessment and expanding on the recyclability of reclaimed plastic-modified asphalt.
The webinar was presented by Andrew Papacostas from Department of Transport Victoria, Associate Professor Filippo Giustozzi from RMIT University and his team, including Dr Marie Enfrin, Yeong Jia Boom, and Dr Dai Lu Xuan.
The operation of smart motorways is a subset of broader transport operations and relies on complex organisational arrangements with highly specialised capabilities to manage a growing number of assets, follow a wide range of operational scenarios, coordinate with multiple stakeholders, and continuously adapt to new technologies and systems. This increasing complexity places pressure on traffic management centre (TMC) managers and their operational staff who are responsible for delivering motorway safety and efficiency objectives.
As such transport agencies continually seek to improve the way smart motorways operational capabilities are managed, developed and adapted to minimise disruption for customers through best practice operational planning, project integration, live network monitoring, traveller communications and traffic management.
In response Austroads has prepared a research report looking into emerging and new trends to inform potential future directions for TMCs across Australia and New Zealand. Guidelines have also been developed for road-focused agencies to help classify their operating characteristics, define a national capability framework for the operational environment, and showcase good practice integration of new projects and enhanced smart motorways schemes.
This webinar, presented by David Yee, Simon Gough and Joanne Deng, provides an overview of the future trends, research findings and agency guidance. The research into future trends helped to identify different motorway operational methods and practices as well as operational principles that underpin an agency’s smart motorway capabilities. These smart motorway capabilities include TMC business management, live motorway operations, motorway operational planning and optimisation, motorway projects integration as well as use of intelligence tools and devices to inform decision making.
The webinar also offers advice on how to support improving smart motorway capabilities using a Smart Motorway Classification Model and Capability Framework. The capabilities are the foundational abilities that should be developed. The Capability Maturity Model is a maturity scale for smart motorway capabilities that can be used by agencies to set future targets and to measure against. The guidance advises how to use the Capability Maturity Model to plan and improve smart motorway capabilities and projects integration work.
Movement and Place is a multi-disciplinary, place-based approach to the planning, design, delivery and operation of transport networks. It broadens our thinking about our roads and streets beyond their functional role in supporting movement - they are also places for people to live, work and spend time.
It is part of an international shift towards embracing the importance of people, and place when designing, planning or operating streets and roads. It recognises the complementary relationships between place and movement and matching the road or street to its desired function within the wider network.
This webinar, presented by Arjan Rensen, Ben Cebuliak and Gareth Collins, provides an overview of the whole-of-government NSW Movement and Place Framework and how it supports Austroads Guidance, Australian Standards and the Global Street Design Guidelines as they apply in different contexts across NSW. The Framework invites practitioners to take collaborative, spatial and vision-led approaches and offers a common language and process of collaboration to support meaningful discussions across all levels of government, industry, and communities.
Internal combustion engine vehicles are a major source of greenhouse gas emissions in Australia and New Zealand. Encouraging the public to utilise low and zero emission vehicles (LZEVs), such as battery electric vehicles will contribute to creating a more sustainable road transport system.
As the number of LZEVs is expected to rise, there will be a growing demand for charging infrastructure. Increasing availability of such infrastructure will also encourage the uptake of LZEVs; however, currently there is little guidance available to road agencies to assist them in managing the installation of charging infrastructure within road reserves.
This webinar with David Silvester and Norman Cheung presents new Austroads guidance to help agencies manage the planning, installation, and operation of charging infrastructure for non-commercial passenger vehicles with battery-electric or hybrid propulsion within the road reserve or road related areas.
The guidelines draw on the latest international and national experience and case studies and can be used by agencies in the implementation of consistent charging facility practices to reduce costs, improve the road environment, road safety, network operations, and LZEV driver experience.
The webinar covers guidance on managing the life cycle of the facilities, including planning, design, operations, interoperability, maintenance, and decommissioning.
To enable collaboration and the adoption of best-practice approaches across jurisdictions, Austroads is undertaking a multi-stage project to standardise and automate ways of recording and sharing road asset information.
The benefits of standardised collection of road asset data and the availability of a platform to store or exchange data include:
- direct savings to road agencies through reduced information management costs, including the opportunity to sustain an open and competitive market of data collectors
- reducing the time needed to train new staff and contractors
- facilitating better decision making on road investment and expenditure through consistent asset data
- facilitating the implementation of national reforms, including Heavy Vehicle Road Reform and automated vehicle reform
- providing consistent asset data to accommodate innovative technology in the road sector (e.g., LIDAR technology, building information modelling (BIM), and digital twinning).
This webinar, presented by Chris Koniditsiotis, Angus Draheim, Tom Magarey, David Deacon and Geoffrey Paton, presents an overview of the implementation of the Austroads Road Asset Data Standard and demonstrates a knowledge sharing platform that is being developed for road managers to use to report activities, collaborate and share insights.
The proposed National Access Framework for Heavy Vehicles is a principles-based strategic policy document which highlights the role of state and local government road managers in managing heavy vehicles access on the road network. It is also proposed to establish a national Access Working Group to deliver a targeted national Access Work Program based on the Framework's principles.
In this session, presenters – Pascal Felix, Stuart Maxwell and Sanjiv Sathiah, talk about the elements of the framework and how they will potentially benefit state and local road managers and industry.
Road agencies are increasingly utilising various business intelligence tools to collect, process and analyse large amounts of asset management data from internal and external systems. Harnessed information is used to maintain road assets and improve the efficiency of their performance.
In this webinar data practitioners from the Tasmanian Department of State Growth, Queensland Department of Transport and Main Roads and Main Roads Western Australia talk about their experience in using digital data analytics tools for improving the accessibility and visualisation of data in road asset management.
Norah Weatherby’s presentation focuses on the Queensland Department of Transport and Main Roads’ asset information systems and analytics platforms that are critical to supporting Queensland’s road network.
David Deacon shares how the Tasmanian Department of State Growth’ Roads Asset Management Branch works with data to enable effective decision-making, break down silos and connect people.
Shaan Ciantar, from Main Roads Western Australia, talks about Power BI’s Pavelytics, an interactive app that displays relevant data to asset and maintenance managers on selected road sections. Shaan’s presentation goes through the need for such an app, how it was scoped for maximum usability, the data-design process, and finally a demonstration of the app in use.
Nicholas Archer presents a novel approach to mapping road data for Main Roads Western Australia using a custom Power BI visual and web service.
Road agencies increasingly recognise the value of coordination and cooperation with public transport operators in responding to road and transport incidents, as it helps support a more holistic and integrated multimodal approach to minimising traveller disruption.
Austroads has developed guidance for road-focused agencies to improve their capabilities in the management and resolution of an unplanned incident that negatively impacts, or has the potential to impact, the normal operation of more than one transport mode.
This webinar, presented by David Yee and Andrew Somers, provides an overview of the multimodal incident management (MMIM) research findings and agency guidance. The guidance examines worldwide MMIM methods and practices, and identifies key themes and principles for agencies to consider in planning and developing their MMIM capabilities. These themes include vision and strategy for MMIM, coordination and cooperation, integrated operations centres, leverage existing practices, integrated traveller information, traveller demand management and network load balancing, alternative transport services, multimodal data exchange, MMIM tools, and intelligence and decision making.
The webinar also offers advice on how to improve MMIM capabilities using a MMIM Capability Framework that consists of three components:
- a set of MMIM capabilities
- a MMIM Capability Maturity Model
- guidance
The capabilities are the foundational abilities that should be developed. The Capability Maturity Model is a maturity scale for MMIM capabilities that can be used by agencies to set future targets and to measure against. The guidance advises how to use the Capability Maturity Model to plan and improve MMIM capabilities.
Austroads is encouraging drivers, employers and trainers to have their say on proposed changes to heavy vehicle driver licensing in Australia.
The changes are documented in a Consultation Regulation Impact Statement (C-RIS) which seeks feedback on proposed changes to the National Heavy Vehicle Driver Competency Framework. The Framework was endorsed by ministers in 2011 but has only been implemented in four states and territories.
At the request of transport ministers, Austroads has been undertaking an extensive program of work to review and improve the NHVDCF. Austroads’ review aims to deliver a harmonised Australian licence training and assessment framework that produces safe and competent heavy vehicle drivers and reflects the current and future needs of heavy vehicle operators and the future freight task.
Visit austroads.info/c-ris to download the C-RIS, access fact sheets and videos summarising the proposals and provide feedback.
In Australia and New Zealand, bituminous binders used in road construction are tested prior to use to ensure they will perform satisfactorily during road construction/maintenance. Some of the Australian Standards that are used for these tests have not been updated for 25 years which can make it difficult for testing laboratories to adhere to them.
In this webinar Dr Robert Urquhart presents an overview of an Austroads project which provided expert technical input into the revision of seven Australian Standards – four bituminous emulsion, one polymer modified binder and two cutback bitumen related Australian Standard test methods. They were revised by the Australian Standards Committee CH-025 ‘Bitumen and related products for roadmaking’ between August 2020 and September 2022.
Following topics are covered in the session:
- the process used to update an Australian Standard
- the main changes to each of the seven Standards
- the status of revision of each Standard
Road tunnels are an important element of the transport infrastructure, requiring significant resources and energy to construct, operate and maintain. Consequently, they are potentially a major source of greenhouse gas emissions and environmental pollution.
Practices and methods that promote the sustainability of road tunnels are, therefore, necessary for alleviating the pressure they exert on scarce resources and the natural environment. However, sustainability is not about what should be done for the environment, it is something that must be done to preserve the quality of all life on the planet. It is particularly important for a road tunnel compared to a road at grade as a road tunnel has a substantially higher carbon footprint, both during its construction and the continuous operation of its systems throughout its operating life.
Every state and territory in Australia, as well as New Zealand, has committed to net zero emissions by 2050. In this context, responsible organisations have an obligation to reduce the sustainability impacts of delivering and operating road tunnels whose asset life is expected to extend beyond 2050.
In this webinar, Georgia O’Connor, Les Louis and Tony Peglas give an overview of the research undertaken to include updates for sustainability in the four parts of the Austroads Guide to Road Tunnels (AGRT).
The research presented in the session will provide owners, operators, designers and those constructing tunnels with guidance on how to achieve more sustainable outcomes at each stage of a road tunnel’s life cycle.
Governments, transport agencies, and industry have identified the need to reduce waste going to landfill and increase the use of recycled materials to achieve more sustainable development and improve outcomes for communities. The latest update to the Guide to Pavement Technology Part 4E: Recycled Materials covers the advancement in material re-use that has occurred in the 13 years since the 2009 version of the guide was published.
There is wide concern around the misuse of recycled materials in road construction, and it is generally agreed that roads should not be viewed as alternative avenues for waste disposal. A protocol has been established that follows a step-by-step process for quantifying the effect of using novel, post-consumer and industrial wastes or recycled materials in asphalt pavements and sprayed seal surfacings.
This webinar covers the following key updates made to the Austroads Guide to Pavement Technology Part 4E: Recycled Materials:
- Latest and emerging recycled materials utilised within pavements and information on their use in specific applications as well as associated issues, risks, and considerations.
- The developed holistic assessment framework for the use of recycled materials in road pavements.
- The developed protocol for asphalt and sprayed seals that establishes a step-by-step process for quantifying the effect of using novel, post-consumer and industrial wastes or recycled materials.
The webinar is presented by Phil Herrington from WSP New Zealand, Brody Clark from WSP Australia with participation of Grant Bosma from Waka Kotahi NZ Transport Agency and Mike Pickering from the Queensland Department of Transport and Main Roads.
Austroads has updated the Guide to Road Design Part 6: Roadside Design, Safety and Barriers (AGRD Part 6) introducing new sections on the fundamentals of safety barrier systems and design advice for other road safety devices.
This webinar, presented by Dr Rod Troutbeck and Richard Fanning, focuses on the updated Section 6 providing an overview of the process to design the installation of a safety barrier.
The session describes the actions for defining the context of the installation including choosing an appropriate containment level. It also outlines the preliminary design tasks of selecting a barrier and defining its lateral and longitudinal position.
The aspects of detailed design are also described, including the installation refinements, selecting the appropriate terminal or transition and the structural design of a proposed barrier. Finally, the webinar briefly describes the documentation of the design.
Austroads has updated the Guide to Road Design Part 6: Roadside Design, Safety and Barriers (AGRD Part 6) introducing new sections on the fundamentals of safety barrier systems and design advice for other road safety devices.
This webinar, presented by Dr Rod Troutbeck and Richard Fanning, covers the new structure of AGRD Part 6 and new information included as part of the current guide update focusing on the following sections:
- Section 4: Treatment Options, including options for consideration for a number of relatively common hazards
- Section 5: Fundamentals of Safety Barrier Systems, including information to assist users to make informed decisions when selecting a barrier system for a particular site
- Section 6: Road Safety Barriers, including design process.
The webinar also provides details and the research background to a number of new concepts and processes that have been included in AGRD Part 6. These include barrier flexibility as a measure of their performance, the use of working width rather than deflection, the need to choose an appropriate containment level, the use of a new concept of the departure points of redirection, the placement of barriers behind kerbs, a revised method to calculate the length of need, the need to install barriers in appropriate soils and the orientation of barriers on superelevated roadways.
Road users are increasingly recognising the value of data for improved mobility and safety. Austroads Cloud Connected Road User (CCRU) project studied how agencies can support cloud-connected road users through data from portable and fixed in-vehicle devices to assist with trip planning, and warning and advice when travelling. The project examined various CCRU data provision methods and practices in the EU, USA, Australia, and New Zealand to provide agencies with guidance on how to manage, enhance, and deliver data to CCRUs.
This webinar, presented by Vibeke Matthews and David Yee, provides an overview of the various business models that may be used by agencies to support the CCRU ecosystem. It addresses the potential range of agency involvement across the key roles of CCRU data gatherer, data provider and data presenter that may be employed depending on the business model adopted for each data type.
The webinar also offers advice on how to manage the six key data function areas that are critical to supporting CCRUs. These include managing data foundations, governing data, planning and designing data, enabling and maintaining data, using data; and, if presenting data directly to road users, managing road user apps and websites. The outputs of this project will form the foundation of data support requirements for future CAVs.
This webinar, presented by Austroads Temporary Traffic Management Project Manager Chris Koniditsiotis and AITDSA Workstream Manager Gavin Hill, is an overview of the Austroads Innovative Temporary Traffic Management Device and Solution Assessment (AITDSA) scheme (commencing 1 July 2022).
AITDSA provides a way for innovative devices and solutions used for temporary traffic management to be assessed and recognised by Austroads members throughout Australia and New Zealand.
AITDSA responds to the emergence of new technologies, innovative solutions, and devices that can be used to improve safety at mobile and static work sites that perform a diverse range of functions, including:
- regulating traffic (i.e., to assign priority and indicate regulations in force)
- informing motorists of hazards or regulatory controls ahead
- warning of temporary hazards that could endanger motorists or workers and plant engaged in work on the road.
This webinar introduces Austroads new projects lined up for the 2022-23 financial year.
The session is most beneficial to consultants who may be interested in tendering for Austroads projects.
Upcoming projects focus on road network resilience, pavement design, movement and place, cycling and micromobility, future freight vehicles, road design, driver licensing, climate change risk assessment, automated and electric vehicle data exchange and provision.
Austroads Project APT6305 Use of Road-grade Recycled Plastics for Sustainable Asphalt Pavements is investigating the use of recycled plastics in asphalt. The project is almost completed with results to date provided in three published 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.
The third report, the most comprehensive so far, presents the results of the experimental investigation on recycled plastics in asphalt and bitumen by focusing on the asphalt and bitumen properties, microplastics and emissions.
This webinar presents the outcomes of the project to date and covers the results of the multi-faceted (i.e. performance and environmental testing) laboratory investigation on bitumen and asphalt modified with recycled plastics. The session provides details on a potential framework for introducing the use of recycled plastics into current policies and specifications.
Webinar presenters are Andrew Papacostas from Department of Transport Victoria, Associate Professor Filippo Giustozzi from RMIT University and his team, including Dr Marie Enfrin, Yeong Jia Boom, and Dr Dai Lu Xuan.
Two parts of the Austroads Guide to Project Delivery – Part 2: Planning and Control and Part 3: Contract Management – have been reviewed and updated to assist road-based infrastructure delivery units of transport agencies to improve efficiencies and reduce costs in the project delivery stage.
In this webinar Colin MacKay, Nigel Powers and Karen Cogo present the updated guides which focus on new industry best practice and techniques that have become available since the Guide to Project Delivery was published in 2014, including lean construction and digital engineering.
Road tunnels are major pieces of infrastructure across the road network, and the number of tunnels is expected to increase in the coming years. Although they are relatively safe, a significant number of crashes occur on the approaches to and within tunnels.
Austroads commissioned the University of New South Wales, Research Centre for Integrated Transport Innovation (rCITI) to investigate and evaluate the application of low-cost perceptual countermeasure (PCM) treatments in road tunnel environments as a means of improving driver speed behaviour, alertness and lane discipline, thereby reducing crash risk. The project involved two key research activities.
Research Activity 1 involved a systematic literature review and stakeholder consultation. Based on the outputs of these activities, three PCM treatments were selected for evaluation in a virtual reality driving simulator: Striped Wall Pattern; Rumble Strips (Edgeline and Centreline); and Pacemaker Lighting.
Research Activity 2 involved an experimental study conducted in the virtual reality driving simulator, located at rCITI. The virtual 3D environment for the driving simulator was based on the cross-sectional layout and alignments of the Sydney Harbour Tunnel. Driving performance data as well as subjective feedback from participants relating to their interaction with the PCM treatments were collected and analysed.
This webinar provides an overview of the two research activities and the key findings deriving from them. It is presented by Professor Michael Regan, Julius Secadiningrat, Dr. Prasannah Prabhakharan, and Mitchell Cunningham.
Austroads has published a report proposing a set of symbols for low and zero emission vehicles (LZEVs) and associated charging or refuelling infrastructure to be used on road signs and for road marking in Australia and New Zealand. The proposal forms a basis for testing and standardisation of the symbols (according to the Australian Standards) and their adoption in the Australian Road Rules and signage manuals.
The background of this work is that with the uptake of low and zero emission vehicles, consistent signage for electric-powered vehicle parking and charging is required. New Zealand has rolled out charging signage nationwide. However, in Australia there are currently no standardised low and zero emission vehicle symbols or signs.
This webinar, presented by Dr Robert Kochhan, Paul Hayes and Dr Clarissa Han, provides an overview of the report and the proposed symbols for the following five categories:
- Electric-powered vehicle
- Electric-powered vehicle being charged
- Charging station for electric-powered vehicles
- Hydrogen fuel-cell powered vehicle and associated refuelling infrastructure
- Access to lanes and roadways designated for electric-powered vehicles and hydrogen fuel-cell powered vehicles.
Physical road infrastructure such as pavement markings and signals may have an important role to play to support the uptake of automated vehicles (AVs). Austroads has recently completed a project to provide road agencies with clear advice on investing in physical infrastructure to support the operation of AVs.
This webinar, presented by Andrew Somers, Simon Xue and Elnaz Irannezhad, provides a detailed overview of the advice that addresses which infrastructure types should be prioritised for investment, as well as the timing and scale for that investment.
The advice has been developed against a backdrop of significant uncertainty around the future of AVs. These uncertainties include the year high-level AVs will become market-ready and the level of reliance of future AVs on physical infrastructures. To inform the development of the advice, the project first undertook an uptake forecast, an infrastructure assessment and economic analysis.
Having accounted for the various uncertainties of future AVs, the project has found the greatest return can be achieved by investments that will:
- support current lower capability AVs
- offer some advantages for human drivers
- be strategically relevant to future higher-level AVs.
This webinar, presented by Dr Negin Zhalehjoo, Andrew Papacostas and Dr Didier Bodin, focuses on the outcomes of an Austroads research project “Laboratory Fatigue Characterisation of Foamed Bitumen Stabilised (FBS) Materials”. The objective of this project was to develop a laboratory fatigue relationship to predict the performance of FBS materials to be used for future pavement design of FBS materials. Extensive laboratory experiments were undertaken during the project, including indirect tensile testing and flexural testing on laboratory prepared and cured FBS specimens.
The webinar covers the following key topics:
- A summary of the testing program and procedures to measure and analyse the fatigue life of FBS specimens.
- The results of indirect tensile testing and flexural testing to determine the modulus, strength, and fatigue characteristics of FBS materials.
- The development of a new laboratory fatigue relationship for FBS materials as well as the discussion on the potential link between the fatigue performance of the FBS mixes and the mix properties.
- The comparison between the fatigue life predictions from the Shell asphalt laboratory fatigue relationship against the predictions using the developed presumptive fatigue relationship in this project.
This webinar, presented by Dr James Grenfell and Dr Didier Bodin, focuses on the development of a specification on the supply of recycled crushed glass sand as part of a project to support increased use of recycled crushed glass (RCG) in road infrastructure. The project covers the use of RCG as a backfill and bedding sand, and within drainage, embankment fill, landscaping, and low risk concrete applications.
The webinar covers the technical basis behind the specification development and discusses the guidelines on how to process RCG.
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.
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.
The ban on the export of recycled waste plastic by the Australian government has led to interest in the use of recycled waste plastic in road surfacing applications. Austroads has published a report, Interim guidelines for the use of recycled waste plastic in local government road surfacing applications, to assist local government in the use and procurement of road surfacing products incorporating recycled waste plastic.
This webinar, presented by Azeem Remtulla and Steve Halligan provides key information from the interim guidelines, discusses the status of the use of recycled waste plastic in road surfacing applications, the methods for the addition of recycled waste plastic into bituminous binders and asphalt along with limitations on the use of recycled waste plastic and proposes a methodology to the procurement of products incorporating recycled waste plastic.
The webinar also discusses surfacing applications for local council roads and propose a framework for comparing the properties of conventional asphalt to alternative asphalt mixes containing recycled waste plastic. This framework is based on current state road authority (SRA) and local government asphalt specifications and includes proposed tests to compare the performance properties of conventional asphalt against alternative asphalt mixes.
Worked hypothetical examples of the procurement and assessment process for asphalt incorporating recycled waste plastic as an alternative to conventional asphalt are also shared.
Austroads has published two technical reports drawing together the research underpinning changes made to key components of the Guide to Pavement Technology.
The reports detail the technical basis for changes made to Guide to Pavement Technology Part 2: Pavement Structural Design and Guide to Pavement Technology Part 5: Pavement Evaluation and Treatment Design.
This webinar, presented by Dr Michael Moffatt and Dr Geoff Jameson, outlines the technical basis of the changes made to Parts 2 and 5 since the last versions of the technical basis reports were published in 2008.
The 2017 edition of Part 2 included improvements to the design of flexible pavements, significant revision to the procedures used to calculate the design traffic, new procedures for the design of pavements with lime-stabilised subgrades and improved methods to predict the in-service fatigue life of cemented materials and estimate asphalt and cemented material design moduli.
The Guide to Pavement Technology Part 5 provides guidance on the selection and design of strengthening treatments to rehabilitate pavements. This is an integral part of managing a road network. The most recent edition of the guide enhanced the design procedure and expanded its use to a broad range of strengthening treatments, including asphalt overlays, inlays, major patchings and stabilisation of pavement layers and subgrade. The procedure is identical to the mechanistic-empirical procedure for the design of new pavements (detailed in Part 2) with the addition of an initial phase which determines the properties of the materials in the road-bed.
This webinar presents an Austroads online repository of emerging vehicle technology trials conducted by Austroads’ members and private industry around Australia and New Zealand.
The trials capture some of the ground-breaking work and lessons learned to help agencies better focus their research investment and inform policy and strategy decisions leveraging the benefits of emerging technologies and minimising some of the risks associated with them.
Webinar presenters are Andrew Somers who speaks about the repository, its purpose and content, James Soo from the Department of Transport Victoria and Nicholas Brook from the Queensland Department of Transport and Main Roads.
James Soo shares lessons learned from the Advanced Connected Vehicles Victoria (ACV2) trial, CAV Highway Pilot trial and the Omni-Aware Roadside Adaptation of Automated Vehicle LiDAR project.
Nicholas Brook talks about how Automated Vehicles interact with road infrastructure and the Ipswich Connected Vehicle Pilot.
This webinar provides an overview of Austroads’ projects 2021-22 and what is required to work with Austroads.
The session is beneficial to consultants who may be interested in tendering for Austroads projects.
The projects discussed focus on data collection and management, digital engineering, tunnel design and componentry, bridge assessment, pavement technology, road design, road safety audits, driver licensing, environment reporting, and vehicle and infrastructure connectivity.
The webinar is presented by Paul Davies, Austroads Acting General Manager Operations, and program managers:
- Ross Guppy, Program Manager Transport Infrastructure
- Michael Nieuwesteeg, Program Manager Road Safety and Design
- Richard Delplace, Program Manager Transport Network Operations
- Vibeke Matthews, Acting Program Manager Future Vehicles and Technology, and Environment and Sustainability Program.
Following the update of the Austroads Guide to Pavement Technology Part 5: Pavement Evaluation and Treatment Design in 2019, Austroads commissioned the development of a strategy for future improvement of the mechanistic-empirical procedure (MEP) used in pavement rehabilitation and strengthening treatment design.
This webinar, presented by Dr Didier Bodin and Dr Geoff Jameson, outlines future research direction derived from the review of national and international literature and road agency best practice. Priority areas were identified through engagement with pavement designers across road agencies and industry. The main topics presented include:
- Methods to characterise past and future fatigue damage of existing bound pavement layers.
- Design method to quantify the extent of reflective cracking in treatment layers.
- Enhanced use of traffic speed deflectometer data.
The roadmap for short, medium and long-term strategy will inform future research program towards providing pavement designers with improved pavement rehabilitation design procedures in the near future.
The webinar also discusses practical aspects of the pavement and subgrade layers moduli back-calculation from measured surface deflections.
The increasing pace of change of technology brings considerable promise of more data, of a higher quality, captured for a lower cost. This has the potential to improve the asset management of roads by enabling better decision making and providing a more complete picture of asset performance.
These benefits, however, are not automatic. For asset managers, it can be difficult to know what technology is available and how the benefits compare to costs. There is also often considerable friction in moving to new approaches as existing processes and systems are tailored for the status quo. Perhaps the biggest hurdle is confidence in moving from an existing approach to having trust in the unknown.
In response to this need to understand the emerging technologies available, the cost-effectiveness of these technologies, and the implications of transitioning from existing to new approaches, Austroads has developed a research report on next generation data collection technologies for road pavement assets.
With specific reference to road pavement assets, this webinar takes attendees through:
- The key themes across the data required to inform asset management decisions.
- The current state of data collection technologies.
- The interconnected ecosystem of emerging data collection technologies.
- A structured framework for evaluating the cost-effectiveness of emerging data collection technologies.
- Insights from the application of the evaluation framework and implications for future approaches to data collection.
Presented by David Jansen, Susan Chamberlain, Ella Hingston, Dr Colin Kemp and Trevor Chiang.
This is a final session in the series of three webinars based on the Austroads report Prolonging the Life of Road Assets Under Increasing Demand: A Framework and Tools for Informing the Development and Justification of Asset Preservation and Renewal.
It is presented by Tim Martin, Tyrone Toole and Qindong Li, and explains the broad framework and the economic and customer centred basis for justifying appropriate levels of investment in road asset preservation and renewal. Examples include those which impact strategic, network level decisions and supporting policies and processes.
This is the second session in a series to present the findings of Prolonging the Life of Road Assets Under Increasing Demand: A Framework and Tools for Informing the Development and Justification of Asset Preservation and Renewal.
The webinar, presented by Tyrone Toole, Dr Tim Martin, Ranita Sen, Qindong Li and Liam Terris, explains the framework, tools and case studies in detail, and how asset management practitioners can apply these in their day-to-day work.
The emphasis is on reinforcing good practice and its justification and how different preservation and renewal options can be evaluated.
It also provides a detailed introduction into the Pavement Life-cycle Costing tool, followed by worked examples through the presentation of several case studies.
Over recent years there have been a number of incidents of structural failures of sign and high mast lighting structures across Australia and New Zealand, primarily due to poor design and construction practices. In addition to the obvious unacceptable safety risks and property damage caused by such incidents, these failures create substantial unforeseen operational costs to repair and modify these assets. This often results in significant traffic delays and imparts reputational damage to the governing road authority and other parties involved.
The Austroads report Design and Construction Guidelines for the Delivery of Large Cantilever and Gantry Structures documents consistent advice for the design and construction of large cantilever and gantry structures that is aligned with national and international best practice.
This webinar, presented by Claire Jager, Linda Ziebell and Andrew Wong, covers the following key topics:
- gaps in current guidance and standards
- examples of good practice
- lessons learned from past failures.
The guidance document should be read alongside relevant standards and is intended for use by all stakeholders including:
- state road agencies
- local government agencies
- designers, contractors and fabricators.
This is the first session in a series of three webinars to present the findings of the report Prolonging the Life of Road Assets Under Increasing Demand: A Framework and Tools for Informing the Development and Justification of Asset Preservation and Renewal.
The session covers:
- Review of challenges, guiding principles, examples of practice and definition of requirements.
- Development of framework, procedures and supporting tools.
- Scope and design of the case studies.
- Case study results and consolidated findings.
Presented by Qindong Li, Tim Martin, Ranita Sen and Tyrone Toole.
The freight industry is critical to the economy, and for many sectors it is heavy vehicles that underpin freight movements and prosperity.
The average age of trucks in Australia and New Zealand is among the highest in the developed world. The oldest trucks are associated with higher environmental and health costs than newer trucks, yet these have been poorly quantified to date. Managing these issues is important to maintaining the freight industry’s social license.
Austroads has published a research report which analyses the impacts of an ageing heavy vehicle fleet and explores measures that have been used to manage this challenge in Australasia and internationally.
Austroads has recently completed a project to consolidate the previous Guide to Road Design Part 1: Introduction to Road Design, Part 2: Design Considerations and Part 8: Process and Documentation into a new Part 1: Objectives of Road Design.
This update to Part 1 of the Guide to Road Design provides practitioners with a detailed description of the critical aspects of road design and essentially combines the former parts 1, 2 and 8 into one single part. This will enable Part 2 to be utilised for network design considerations in a future update and the removal of Part 8 of the Guide.
In addition, a new Part 7: New and Emerging Treatments has been created to provide information to practitioners using emerging treatments which are known to provide some benefit from a safety and/or operational perspective but have not yet produced evidence for predominant contexts.
Part 7 contains design-related knowledge, findings from research and practical experiences about new, emerging and innovative treatments. This is a holding place for information about these treatments where full guidance is not available, for all road environments or until learning from implementation/trials is captured. The intention is for this information to be migrated to the respective parts 1 to 6 of the Guide when comprehensive evidence and dimensional guidance is available.
This webinar, presented by Noel O’Callaghan and Malcolm Mak, provides an overview of the new parts 1 and 7 and explain the links to other Austroads guides as well as jurisdictional supplements.
This webinar presents a book “Paving Our Ways”, which references Austroads’ research and provides a comprehensive international history of the world’s pavements, running from the earliest human settlements to the present day. No previous book has covered such a broad canvass.
The book is written for general and technically oriented readers, tracing the human and social aspects of pavement development and use and providing detailed technical background. It also caters to students of engineering and transport wishing to broaden their knowledge of their profession or taking a course in the history and sociology of engineering.
“Paving Our Ways” provides interesting and curious asides about the stranger aspects of pavements. It explores the controversies surrounding the development of macadam pavements and, later, of asphalt pavements in a way that provides many insights into modern pavements. It also examines the subsequent competition between pavements using bituminous or cementitious binders.
The book covers three major time zones. The first is from the times of the Egyptian pharaohs to the end of the Roman era, the second is from the Middle Ages to the beginning of the First World War during which people like Tresaguet, Telford and McAdam had major impacts, and the third is from the end of the First World War to the present time when motorised trucks and machinery dramatically changed the way the pavements were made and used.
Looking back on the way current pavement technologies evolved, the authors of the book Maxwell Lay, formerly Director ConnectEast and Australian Road Research Board, John Metcalf, Formerly Louisiana State University, USA and Kieran Sharp, Road Eng. Assoc. of Asia and Australasia show how Australian practice relates to international practice.
Currently, most Austroads member agencies rely on their unique technical specifications for the delivery of roadworks and bridge projects. In many cases, these specifications have been developed over a number of years in consultation with local industry and suppliers.
While it is recognised that there will always be some requirements that will only apply to a single jurisdiction, standardising specifications (and the associated test methods) has the potential to improve work processes for road agencies, suppliers and contractors.
To increase efficiency for road agencies and industry and optimise compliance with contract requirements, 14 technical specifications have been published for all Austroads member agencies to use for the construction of roadworks and bridgeworks. These specifications are suitable for use with any general conditions of contract, including design and construct contracts. They are expected to be used in conjunction with supplementary local or contract specific requirements.
This webinar, presented by Richard Edwards, takes participants through the technical specifications development process and provides an overview of the structure and layout adopted for the specifications.
Network operation planning aims to guide the day-to-day operation and development of the road network. These management activities are regularly completed and documented through the development of Network Operation Plans (NOPs), which link policy objectives while managing competing transport and land use priorities. This intent of NOPs is generally agreed, but the way and level of application varies across the jurisdictions in Australia and New Zealand. The recent adoption of the Movement and Place (M&P) Framework in most of these jurisdictions has also influenced NOPs.
Austroads has led a review to understand current NOP practices and provide material to build capabilities in state and local government agencies to increase NOP use and implementation. The approach to increase NOP use and application consisted of a review of relevant literature, five case studies in four jurisdictions and a detailed review of the Network Fit Assessment Tool. There was also engagement with state transport agencies.
The project has produced an online Reference Material Library to help those looking to develop or evolve NOP processes.
The webinar, presented by Andrew Somers, Will Fooks and Alex Blackett, covers:
- an overview of the activities undertaken as part of this project.
- a summary of the takeaways from the review of current practices.
- an introduction to the Online Library.
This webinar, presented by Les Louis, Lauren Thompson and Dr Richard Yeo, informs practitioners about the updates made to Part 2 of the Guide to Road Tunnels in 2021 and the reasons for those changes. Every section of Part 2 is addressed to show what changes have been made. More detail is provided about the new sections of the document, highlighting the most significant material added to the document in the section on Systems Engineering.
The overall changes brought about by recent research and developments, and those caused by revisions of the other parts of the guide as well as the addition of Part 4 are also addressed.
The Engineering Guideline to Bridge Asset Management was developed to provide specific asset management guidance for road bridges. The guideline promotes an engineering approach (engineering principles, knowledge, experience and modelling tools) as being the only robust method for understanding the current and future, condition and needs of a bridge network.
The guideline defines best practice asset management for bridges over their lifecycle in a manner that will provide a transparent link between investment and outcomes. It includes a specific and detailed asset management framework for bridges.
This webinar, presented by Barry Wright, Torill Pape and Peter Shaw, takes participants through the development of the guideline and provides an overview of the key principles and learnings contained in the guideline.
On-road public transport (ORPT) priority treatments improve public transport’s level of service increasing reliability and travel time benefits for users.
Austroads has developed a practical process (referred to as a ‘tool’) to guide practitioners through the selection of the appropriate ORPT priority treatments for any road scenario. The tool is documented in the 2020 Austroads report AP-R645-20 On-Road Public Transport Priority Tool.
This webinar, presented by David Green and Graham McCabe, provides an overview of the tool explaining how it was developed and how practitioners may use the tool in their day-to-day work.
Austroads’ report Improved Traffic Management Guidance: Freeway Capacity Analysis reviews the latest research and practices in freeway capacity analysis and makes recommendations for updating Austroads FCA guidance.
This webinar with Paul Bennett and Graham McCabe presents the research and findings outlined in the report, including the consultations with practitioners from across Australia and New Zealand, the comparative study of different capacity analysis methodologies and the recommendations made for updating Austroads FCA guidance.
The presentation slides can be downloaded from the supporting documents tab after logging in.
Raised Safety Platforms (RSPs) are a vertical deflection device increasingly used to reduce the maximum comfortable operating speed for vehicles to Safe System collision speeds, particularly at intersections. While the use of vertical deflection devices has typically been limited to lower speed environments, there is increasing interest in the use of RSPs in higher speed environments and for other locations where pedestrians and cyclists would typically be injured.
The purpose of Austroads’ research report ‘Effectiveness and Implementation of Raised Safety Platforms’ was to provide clarity around the design and operation of RSPs and deepen the understanding of leading international practice across a range of applications and performance dimensions. The research included a review of literature, sample investigations and edits to relevant Austroads guides. The literature has shown that, outside of the Netherlands, where RSPs have been used extensively, a ‘community of practice’ is developing in Australia and New Zealand, with the majority of applications at signalised intersections above 50 km/h to date being in Victoria. There is evidence that RSPs are a promising road safety countermeasure.
In this webinar Fabian Marsh, Hamish Mackie and Rebekah Thorne outline the research approach and the key findings from the information review and sample investigations that have implications for future practice.
This webinar, presented by Ann-Marie Head and Jeanette Ward, focuses on the planning and design considerations for walkable residential neighbourhoods, both new and existing, and where to find that guidance in Austroads’ guides.
The webinar covers the following key topics:
- what data to collect
- planning/network considerations
- design considerations
- examples of applying walkable characteristics
- best practice examples.
This is a final session in the series of webinars held by Austroads to step practitioners through the updated pedestrian planning and design information.
Austroads’ review of the pedestrian planning and design guidance in the Guide to Traffic Management (AGTM) and Guide to Road Design (AGRD) identified a total of 120 planning and design gaps. Recommended changes to the AGTM were published in April 2020 followed by a series of exceptionally popular webinars.
Recommended changes to the AGRD have been reviewed and approved by the Road Design Task Force and will find their way into the AGRD as part of its update and restructure planned by the Road Safety & Design program in FY20-21.
‘What gets measured gets managed’ (Drucker, 1954). Performance metrics, indicators and benchmarks describe how our road assets (and transport systems) are functioning and operating within the context of the road users’ (and societal) expectations. This enables agencies and authorities to manage investment and resources to address the areas of greatest need.
Austroads first developed National Performance Indicators (NPIs) in 1993 to promote consistency in reporting of road performance across state transport agencies. Over time, however, the uptake of NPIs has diminished due to a misalignment with state agencies’ own performance reporting needs, concurrently with the advent of new datasets and the increased value that these datasets provide.
This webinar, presented by Simon Latham, Scott Benjamin and Robert Kane, explores the current performance reporting practices used nationally and internationally including the type and application of urban road network performance indicators and metrics. The webinar highlights challenges and opportunities related to existing performance indicators and reporting and discusses the recommendations which look to support consistent and commonly agreed performance indicators (revised NPIs) for urban road-based transport performance measurement.
This webinar, presented by Richard Fanning, Noel O’Callaghan and Madeleine Bekavac, is about the guidance on road cross-section design for road stereotypes, which have been developed to assist road managers, planners and designers to achieve improved road safety outcomes through the application of consistent standards along a road corridor.
Practitioners will learn about the thirteen midblock road stereotypes that cover rural and urban roads ranging from freeways and motorways to local access roads. Through a number of case studies, presenters will demonstrate the application of the stereotypes for the development of network safety plans that illustrate how to achieve reductions in crash risk along the network.
Presenters also outline a range of cross-sections with different attributes that were considered appropriate for each road stereotype and assessed for crash risk using the International Road Assessment Program (iRAP) star ratings, the Australian National Risk Assessment Model (ANRAM) fatal and serious injury (FSI) crash prediction models.
A user guide developed to assists practitioners in selecting the most appropriate stereotypes suitable for the needs of their jurisdictions is also discussed.
This webinar, presented by Ann-Marie Head and Jeanette Ward, focuses on the planning and design considerations that contribute to walkable activity centres - vibrant places where people shop, work, meet, relax and often live. The session also explains where this information can be found in Austroads’ guides.
The webinar covers the following key topics:
- what data to collect
- planning/network considerations
- examples of applying walkable characteristics
- design considerations
- types of shared space streets
- best practice examples.
This session is the fourth in the series of webinars held by Austroads to step practitioners through the updated pedestrian planning and design information.
Austroads’ review of the pedestrian planning and design guidance in the Guide to Traffic Management (AGTM) and Guide to Road Design (AGRD) identified a total of 120 planning and design gaps. Recommended changes to the AGTM were published in April 2020 followed by a series of exceptionally popular webinars.
Recommended changes to the AGRD have been reviewed and approved by the Road Design Task Force and will find their way into the AGRD as part of its update and restructure planned by the Road Safety & Design program in FY20-21.
This webinar presents how to ensure intersections are planned and designed appropriately for pedestrians, and where to find that guidance in Austroads’ guides.
The webinar covers the following key topics:
- what data to collect
- types and how they impact pedestrians
- selection process
- design of each type to improve walking outcomes
- best practice examples.
Presented by Ann-Marie Head and Jeanette Ward.
This session is the third in the series of webinars held by Austroads to step practitioners through the updated pedestrian planning and design information.
Austroads’ review of the pedestrian planning and design guidance in the Guide to Traffic Management (AGTM) and Guide to Road Design (AGRD) identified a total of 120 planning and design gaps. Recommended changes to the AGTM were published in April 2020 followed by a series of exceptionally popular webinars.
Recommended changes to the AGRD have been reviewed and approved by the Road Design Task Force and will find their way into the AGRD as part of its update and restructure planned by the Road Safety & Design program in FY20-21.
This webinar, presented by Ann-Marie Head and Jeanette Ward, focuses on how to ensure pedestrian crossings are planned and designed appropriately, and where to find that guidance in Austroads’ guides.
The webinar covers the following key topics:
- what data to collect
- types, description and appropriate context
- selection process
- design details for each type
- best practice examples.
This session is the second in the series of webinars held by Austroads to step practitioners through the updated pedestrian planning and design information.
Austroads’ review of the pedestrian planning and design guidance in the Guide to Traffic Management (AGTM) and Guide to Road Design (AGRD) identified a total of 120 planning and design gaps. Recommended changes to the AGTM were published in April 2020 followed by a series of exceptionally popular webinars.
Recommended changes to the AGRD have been reviewed and approved by the Road Design Task Force and will find their way into the AGRD as part of its update and restructure planned by the Road Safety & Design program in FY20-21.
A transition in a safety barrier system is a short section between a more flexible system and a less flexible system to decrease the flexibility gradually along its length. At present there are various transition designs being used by road agencies.
This webinar describes the development, testing and evaluation of a proposed Australasian transition from a strong post public domain W-beam to a concrete barrier.
Presented by Rod Troutbeck, Daniel A. Naish and Jade Hogan.
Austroads’ review of the pedestrian planning and design guidance in the Guide to Traffic Management (AGTM) and Guide to Road Design (AGRD) identified a total of 120 planning and design gaps. Recommended changes to the AGTM were published in April 2020 followed by a series of exceptionally popular webinars.
Recommended changes to the AGRD have been reviewed and approved by the Road Design Task Force and will find their way into the AGRD as part of its update and restructure planned by the Road Safety & Design program in FY20-21.
This is the first session in the series of webinars to step practitioners through the updated pedestrian planning and design information. It presents how to ensure pedestrians are catered for appropriately in road cross sections, and where to find that information in the Austroads guides.
The webinar is presented by Ann-Marie Head and Jeanette Ward on 9 February 2021.
An Austroads study of Australian and New Zealand roads capability (AP-R574-18) identified capability/learning gaps amongst graduates and novice practitioners in traffic management. The 2018 study also confirmed that road agencies are experiencing skill shortages and the existing roads workforce will be under threat from rising activity in other sectors.
To address this recognised lack of traffic management knowledge and skills, a series of ‘short and sharp’ learning modules were developed on a range of fundamental traffic management topics.
The learning modules were developed in collaboration with Austroads member agencies and informed by user testing with young practitioners.
Designed for practitioners entering the field and anyone who wishes to increase their knowledge and improve their capabilities in traffic management, the learning modules cover 21 topics and contain supporting quizzes and tutorials. The units include an Introduction to Traffic Management, Traffic Theory, Studies and Analysis, Network Operations Planning and Management, the Safe System Approach and Intelligent Transport Systems.
This webinar discusses the selection of traffic management topics covered in the learning modules and the processes involved in their development and testing. It demonstrates the learning modules and shows how to access them from the Austroads website.
Presented by Paul Bennett and Graham McCabe.
The addition of a small amount of cementitious binder to non-standard granular materials may result in a fit for purpose base or subbase at a significantly lower cost than crushed rock complying with standard specifications. Such lightly bound cemented (LBC) materials have particular use in pavement rehabilitation and heavy patching as they are less susceptible to block cracking and crocodile cracking than cemented materials.
The binder content and strength of LBC materials are significantly lower than heavily bound cemented (HBC) materials. Austroads’ recent report, which reviewed the performance of selected Queensland pavements with LBC bases, has shown that it is possible to design and construct a low-strength material with base thickness and subbase support sufficient to limit the extent of the micro cracking development that leads to macro-cracking.
Considering the use and performance of LBC for moderate to heavily trafficked roads, a structural design method was developed for pavements containing LBC materials and HBC materials in the post fatigue cracking phase of life, including:
- A new elastic characterisation method, applicable to LBC materials and HBC materials in the fatigue cracked state, including methods to vary the design modulus according to the design modulus of the layer supporting the cracked material and the thickness and modulus of the overlying bound materials.
- Design charts to select LBC base thicknesses to inhibit the development of block cracking and crocodile cracking, with the minimum thickness varying with design traffic loading and the support provided by the layer under the LBC base.
This webinar, presented by Dr Geoff Jameson and Dr James Grenfell, explains the structural design method in detail, including its development and application.
Austroads has recently completed a project to review and propose improvements to the guidance on interrupted traffic flow theory contained within the Austroads Guide to Traffic Management (AGTM), Part 2 and Part 3. The updates will broaden practitioners’ understanding of interrupted traffic flow theory and enable them to manage congestion on road networks more effectively.
This webinar, presented by Mark Plattz and Emily Plath, will equip practitioners with the knowledge of the existing topics and emerging best practice in the assessment of simple and complex traffic scenarios in an Australasian context.
Presenters outline the work undertaken during the project and detail the proposed changes to Part 2 and Part 3 of the Guide to Traffic Management. The key areas that have been identified for development in AGTM Part 2 and Part 3 include bottlenecks, travel time reliability, roundabout theory, analysis of signalised intersections, active transportation and demand management, multi-modal considerations and traffic flow impacts of heavy vehicles.
The freight industry is critical to the Australian and New Zealand economies. It comprises road, rail, sea and air transportation including supporting services such as warehousing, storage, freight forwarding and customs brokerage for both domestic and international trade.
As the freight task grows and perceptions of its impact increases, governments face increased community pressure that can lead to restrictions on freight operations. This creates the need for communication campaigns towards the community on the significance and value of freight whilst understanding and addressing possible community concerns.
Austroads commissioned research on ‘Best-Practice Approaches to Road Freight and Communities’ to develop guidelines for best-practice strategies and supporting materials for national, state/territory and local road managers to communicate the importance of freight to the community.
In this webinar, held on 26 November 2020, Drew Gaynor, Anthony Fisk, Christina Chin and Jack Doyle present the key findings of the review, focusing on:
- The importance of the Social Licence to Operate concept.
- The development of the communications strategy encompassing the three levels of campaigns.
- The ‘toolkits’ developed to guide road managers on the necessary steps required to undertake a campaign and the communication tools to inform and engage with the community.
Flexible granular pavements protected by sprayed seal surfacings are the backbone of the Australian and New Zealand road networks. Road agencies in Australia and New Zealand have therefore been focused on producing quality, long-lasting sprayed seal surfacings. Such efforts include conducting research into bituminous binders as a key component of sprayed seals.
A landmark achievement in this area was the Austroads sprayed seal trial sites at Coober Pedy in South Australia and Cooma in New South Wales. These trials were established to evaluate the relative performance of seals constructed using various grades of binders, from their placement through to long-term service. This was a significant research investment made to ensure that the national specifications and test methods that are used for the procurement of sealing binders are contemporary and robust, and incorporate performance requirements to ensure that the bituminous binders that are being procured are of suitable quality and are not prone to premature ageing.
This webinar presents the outcomes of the Austroads research project which was conducted to monitor the performance of the trial sites up to about 8 years since construction. The project work includes comprehensive studies on the ageing properties of trial binders and their effects on the life of sprayed seal surfacings.
Presented by Young Choi and Steve Patrick.
Introducing automated vehicles could dramatically impact the Australian and New Zealand travelling public’s driving experience and the industry’s approach to road safety and road design. This journey will undoubtedly take many years and considerable efforts in partnerships, testing, certification, design and legislation. A growing range of vehicles already available in the market offer automated-steering functions enabled by Advanced Driver-Assistance Systems (ADAS). Their performance depends on the vehicle’s technology and the environment where they are used. Greater consistency and quality in pavement markings will benefit not only automated vehicles but also all road users.
This webinar, presented on 21 October 2020 by Julien Marr, April Zhang, Scott Benjamin and John Wall, focuses on the outcomes of the Austroads research project, which was conducted to understand how longitudinal pavement markings affect automated steering functions and how existing design and maintenance practices could be improved.
Currently road authorities rely on multiple different decision making-frameworks to help identify investment opportunities for the road network. The framework used often varies depending on the nature of the expenditure. For example, cost benefit analysis is commonly used to assess large capital upgrades and risk assessments are commonly used to identify bridges that need treatment. The outputs produced by the different decision-making frameworks are incompatible, making it difficult to prioritise across different expenditure types.
This webinar presents a holistic prioritisation framework that supports investment decision making across and within service groups, asset classes and expenditure categories. The framework also seeks to enhance existing asset management reporting by providing easy to understand portfolio-level outputs to help non-technical decision makers make funding decisions.
Presented by Martin Chow and Dylan Frangos.
Minimising the risk of roadside crashes is important in reducing the number of fatalities and serious injuries on our roads. The recently updated Part 6 of the Austroads Guide to Road Design includes a new method to determine the risk associated with roadside crashes and to identify where risk mitigation treatments are required on urban and rural road networks. The approach establishes a Network Roadside Risk Threshold (NRRIT) which consistently directs the locations for treatments within projects.
This webinar, presented by Peter Ellis and Rod Troutbeck on 6 October 2020, describes the procedure’s background in detail explaining the concepts and research behind it.
The presentation slides can be downloaded from the supporting documents tab after logging in.
This webinar, presented on 29 September by Graham Hobbs, Amy Naulls and James Smithers, focuses on the findings of Austroads’s report Optimising Project Delivery Performance that investigates the challenges and issues affecting the delivery of transport infrastructure projects and the consequential impacts on value for money, timeliness of delivery, agency and political reputation.
Report authors present insights from surveys and interviews conducted with 38 Australian and New Zealand industry experts who came from a range of organisations and roles and who have been involved in the delivery of transport infrastructure projects valued between $1m -$100m.
Presenters talks about the central themes that have emerged from the research and outline short, medium and long-term opportunities to be considered for improvement across the industry in Australia and New Zealand.
Minimising the risk of roadside crashes is important in reducing the number of fatalities and serious injuries on our roads. The recently updated Part 6 of the Austroads Guide to Road Design includes a new method to determine the risk associated with roadside crashes and to identify where risk mitigation treatments are required on urban and rural road networks. The approach establishes a Network Roadside Risk Threshold (NRRIT) which consistently directs the locations for treatments within projects.
This webinar is focused on user guidance, including the practical application of the new method. The webinar describes the new procedure for evaluating a rural road network, how policies will influence decisions and how the NRRIT can consistently delineate road sections where treatments are required.
The webinar also provides the basis of the procedure by using a simpler example so that participants can appreciate its broader application. The example demonstrates how risk graphs, based on contemporary knowledge, can be used to expedite the assessment procedure.
Presented by Peter Ellis and Rod Troutbeck.
Austroads commissioned a review of the heavy vehicle road access tools used in jurisdictions across Australia and New Zealand. Based on the review and a gap analysis, a decision making framework and resource repository have been proposed to help heavy vehicle operators and road asset owners make clear and consistent road access and compliance assessment decisions.
In this webinar, held on 20 August 2020, Drew Gaynor and Christina Chin present the key findings and recommendations of the review.
This webinar, presented by Richard Delplace and Thuan Nguyen on 18 August 2020, provides an overview of the Draft National Prequalification Scheme for Temporary Traffic Management (NPSTTM), which has been developed by Austroads in consultation with its member agencies represented on the Temporary Traffic Management Technical Reference Group (TTMTRG).
The NPSTTM document provides information on a proposed framework for companies wishing to become prequalified for temporary traffic management works. Prequalification is a mandatory requirement for all works managed by state and territory road authorities participating in the scheme. Local governments and other road infrastructure sector representatives may also adopt the scheme as part of their contracts.
Austroads is currently seeking comments on the NPSTTM and this webinar is an opportunity for industry representatives to learn more about the document before they submit their feedback on 28 August 2020.
This webinar, presented by Richard Delplace and Thuan Nguyen on 17 August 2020, provides an overview of the Draft National Training Framework for Temporary Traffic Management (NTFTTM), which has been developed by Austroads in consultation with its member agencies represented on the Temporary Traffic Management Technical Reference Group (TTMTRG).
The NTFTTM document sets out a proposed process and training requirements for practitioners responsible for design, control or implementation of temporary traffic management. The content of the framework will be incorporated in the Austroads Guide to Traffic Management (AGTTM) Part 8.
Austroads is currently seeking comments on the NTFTTM and this webinar is an opportunity for industry representatives to learn more about the document before they submit their feedback on 28 August 2020.
This webinar, held on 13 August 2020, presents the findings of Austroads’ recent research project that explores the many different ways in which place is being measured both locally and internationally, and how transport practitioners can practically and effectively classify, measure and value the place function of our streets.
Presenters Will Fooks and Ed Zhao talk about the experiences and challenges shared by more than 130 participants across Australia and New Zealand, navigate the subjectivities and complexities and establish a framework by which the benefits of place can be captured, communicated and, ultimately, inform transport planning, design and investment decision-making.
This webinar, presented by Robert Urquhart on 11 August 2020, gives an overview of an Austroads project which provided expert technical input into the update of four Australian standards which were revised by the Standards Australia Technical Committee CH-025 ‘Bitumen and related products for roadmaking’.
This webinar describes the main changes that have occurred during revision of the following standards:
- AS 2341.3 Determination of kinematic viscosity
- AS 2341.12 Determination of penetration
- AS 2341.18 Determination of softening point
- AS 3568 Oils for reducing the viscosity of bituminous binders for pavements.
This webinar, presented by Andrew Somers and John Wall on 6 August 2020, outlines the results of Austroads’ forecasts regarding penetration of automated, connected and electric vehicles technologies into new vehicles and vehicle fleets through to 2030. Each forecast focuses on a specific attribute, including:
- Active safety systems
- Capability for automated driving on motorways, in urban areas and in rural areas
- Connectivity via Cooperative ITS (C-ITS) or to the cloud via mobile data networks
- Battery Electric Vehicles
- Used for hire with a driver (as taxi, rideshare, etc).
These forecasts show the effects of a likely pattern of technology adoption and the proliferation of that technology through the fleet. As such, many of the forecasts show that only modest proportions of the fleet are equipped by 2030.
While outside of scope, considerations of the impacts of the technologies remain important and one role of this project was to provide forecasts on anticipated penetration to inform continued discussions on and planning for these impacts.
This webinar, presented by Adrian Bridge on 31 July 2020, provides an overview of a new procurement tool and its application to a road infrastructure project, the Toowoomba Second Range Crossing in Queensland.
The tool has been designed to significantly advance value for money in the delivery of infrastructure projects.
In this Austroads webinar, held on 21 July, leading practitioners Mike Lydon, Claire Pascoe and Sara Stace talk about the latest actions in tactical urbanism and how they influence the rethink of public space to build cities that are more inclusive, safe and prosperous for all.
This webinar, presented by Bryan Li on 9 July 2020, provides an overview of a resource designed to equip practitioners who may not have specific technical experience in transport modelling with clear and practical guidance to help make informed decisions when procuring modelling services or communicating the associated processes.
This webinar, faciliated by Tyrone Toole, Phil Hunt and Ranita Sen on 17 June 2020, focuses on the life-cycle costing framework and a suite of practical examples to demonstrate how to assess the best use of available marginal and non‑standard materials in sealed roads in different geographical and climactic conditions in Australia.
This webinar, presented on 30 June 2020 by Zia Rice, Tyrone Toole and Lory Noya, looks specifically into the use of the life-cycle costing framework and the important components that are considered for the assessment of an unsealed road. Special guest speakers from ARRB’s Asset Management team provide greater detail into the life-cycle costing examples through the presentation of several case studies.
This webinar, presented on 30 June 2020 by Zia Rice, Tyrone Toole and Lory Noya, looks specifically into the use of the life-cycle costing framework and the important components that are considered for the assessment of an unsealed road. Special guest speakers from ARRB’s Asset Management team provide greater detail into the life-cycle costing examples through the presentation of several case studies.
This webinar, presented by Richard Palmer on 16 June 2020, gives a detailed overview of Austroads’ recent publication ‘Decarbonisation of Road Transport Network Operations in Australia and New Zealand’. The issues paper provides an analysis of the contribution of the road transport sector to generating GHG emissions in Australia and New Zealand. It also frames the role that road transport network operations play in supporting the state and national emissions reduction goals.
This webinar presented by Ann-Marie Head and Jeanette Ward on 3 June 2020 focused on why and how to measure walking activities. The webinar highlighted the Guide to Traffic Management series which was recently updated to incorporate international good practice pedestrian planning and design guidance.
This webinar, presented by Zia Rice and Phil Hunt on 2 June 2020, is the first one in a series of three online sessions to extend practitioners’ understanding of what influences material performance and how to balance it with budget optimisation and level‑of‑service requirements.
The session details the development of the materials assessment framework and how it can be used to undertake resource assessment.
This webinar, presented by Ann-Marie Head and Jeanette Ward on 27 May, explains how to better plan for high quality walking environments in our towns and cities. The webinar highlights the Guide to Traffic Management series which has recently been updated to incorporate international good practice pedestrian planning and design guidance.
This webinar, presented by Richard Delplace and David Green on 19 May, provides an overview of changes to the Austroads Guide to Traffic Management. These changes follow the completion of Austroads project NTM6100: Translating research into practice – Advancing the Austroads Guide to Traffic Management. One of the aims of the project was to recommend and implement changes to the Guide to ensure that it is clearer and more useful to its users.
This webinar, held on 13 May, identifies the skills, knowledge and behaviours drivers need, now and in the future, to safely operate cars and trucks equipped with higher levels of automation. It was presented by Professor Michael Regan, Dr Prasannah Prabhakharan, Phil Wallace and Mitch Cunningham.
This webinar, presented on 30 April, gives an overview of ways to assess the safety of existing bridges beyond the Rating Factor approach of AS5100. It was presented by Dr Colin Caprani, Dr Mayer M Melhem and Professor Mark G Stewart.
This webinar, presented on 29 April 2020, discusses the merits of three options to advance the future of PBS access in Australia as it relates to bridges. It was presented by Angus Draheim, Matthew Bereni and Neal Lake.
This webinar, presented on 15 April 2020, provides an overview of the key components which influence fit-for-purpose material selection for low to medium volume regional and rural roads.
It covers:
- material performance and risk assessment
- risk reduction techniques
- materials option assessment
- life cycle cost assessment process.
It considers material properties, traffic, climate, material modification and stabilisation, and life-cycle-cost implications. Case studies provide real-life, practical examples.
It was presented by Mick Savage, Zia Rice and Tyrone Toole.
This webinar, delivered on 9 April 2020, examines alcohol related road trauma and reports on the differing legislation, penalty and enforcement policies and practices in place across Australian jurisdictions. It recommends improvements in policy and practice for both the short and long term.
It was presented by Greer Banyer, Eric Howard and Anne Harris.
This webinar, delivered on 31 March 2020, provides insights into a recent Austroads report that identifies actions that road operators can take to support the transition to electric vehicles (EVs).
The presentation covers:
- The different types of electric vehicles.
- Core and non-core functions of road operators in supporting the transition to EVs.
- The key themes that influence the actions road operators need to consider to support the transition to EVs. This includes leadership, governance, mass/license concessions, registration and licensing data, EV charging guidelines and EV charging infrastructure.
- The key core actions (must do actions) around registration & licensing, road access and EV charging infrastructure. In addition to an overview of the key non-core actions (may do actions to further support the transition to EVs) around education, governance and EV charging infrastructure.
It was presented by John Wall, David Green, Mark Gjerek and Nathan Gore-Brown.
This webinar, presented by Dr Bruce Corben on 26 March 2020, demonstrates ways to integrate Safe System design and operation with Movement and Place for vulnerable road users, in particular pedestrians and cyclists.
This webinar, held on 27 February 2020, provides an overview of Austroads guidance on contemporary best practice methods for developing and implementing road safety management frameworks for local government.
Local government roads typically have a more diverse range of road types, environments and users than state roads, which makes them difficult to manage. The crash rate is generally twice that of state roads and previously much of the body of industry guidance has not been directly relevant to the local government sector.
It covers: • the road safety management system and its relevance for local government in Australia and New Zealand • principles and processes for the development of a framework for road safety management • developing interventions for local government and key stages in developing of road safety programs • implementation and the importance and purpose of monitoring and evaluation.
This webinar was presented by Paul Durdin.
This webinar provides an overview of the life cycle management of local sealed and unsealed roads. It highlights the Austroads Guides and the AUS-SPEC national local government specification system which assist local government practitioners to design, construct and maintain sealed and unsealed roads.
The webinar was presented on 17 February 2020 by Mick Savage and Nandini Mehta.
This online presentation provides an overview of the Austroads Guide to Temporary Traffic Management Part 10: Supporting Guidance.
Part 10 provides information on a range of topics to support the information contained within the other parts of this Guide. The information includes, risk management processes, review, inspection and road safety audit of worksites, events and emergency works.
Presented by Dr Dan Sullivan.
This online presentation provides an overview of the Austroads Guide to Temporary Traffic Management Part 9: Sample Layouts.
Part 9 provides illustrative and educational sample layouts to support the other parts of the Guide and to assist Traffic Management Designers in the interpretation of the various requirements of this Guide.
Presented by Alex Zelenko.
This online presentation provides an overview of the Austroads Guide to Temporary Traffic Management Part 8: Process and Procedures.
Part 8 provides guidance to road authorities, road infrastructure managers, any party conducting works on, or near a road, and all persons involved in planning, designing, implementing, managing and completing temporary traffic management works. It details the processes and procedures relating to jurisdictional management of temporary traffic management at roadworks. The information included covers: categories of temporary traffic management; powers, roles and responsibilities; training; and standard forms and descriptions.
Presented by Bert Prinsloo.
This online presentation provides an overview of the Austroads Guide to Temporary Traffic Management Part 7: Traffic Controllers.
Part 7 details contemporary traffic controller practices including information about training competencies, control instructions and devices.
Presented by Leah Kelly.
This online presentation provides an overview of the Austroads Guide to Temporary Traffic Management Part 6: Field Staff – Implementation and Operation.
Part 6 sets out the requirements of field staff in the process of installing, monitoring and dismantling traffic management on public roads.
Presented by Lee Vossen.
This online presentation provides an overview of the Austroads Guide to Temporary Traffic Management Part 5: Short Term Low Impact Worksites.
Part 5 identifies and details preferred temporary traffic management design and operational practices to be applied for short term low impact works on or near roads.
Presented by Leah Kelly.
This online presentation provides an overview of the Austroads Guide to Temporary Traffic Management Part 4: Mobile Works.
Part 4 has been prepared to assist with mobile worksites, in accordance with Austroads best practice. It provides general information about the context and components of designing temporary traffic guidance schemes at mobile worksites.
Presented by Leah Kelly.
This online presentation provides an overview of the Austroads Guide to Temporary Traffic Management Part 3: Static Worksites.
Part 3 has been specifically prepared to assist with the preparation of traffic guidance schemes (TGSs), in accordance with Austroads best practice. It provides general information about the context and components of designing temporary traffic guidance schemes at static worksites.
Presented by Leah Kelly.
This online presentation provides an overview of the Austroads Guide to Temporary Traffic Management Part 2: Traffic Management Planning.
Part 2 has been specifically prepared to assist with the preparation of traffic management plans (TMPs), in accordance with Austroads best practice. It provides general information about the context, components and format of a TMP.
Presented by Kat McAulay.
This online presentation provides an overview of the Austroads Guide to Temporary Traffic Management Part 1: Introduction.
Part 1 provides an introduction to the topic of Temporary Traffic Management and describes the structure to the 10 Parts of the Guide, the key principles of Temporary Traffic Management and the ongoing governances of the Guide and training by Austroads.
Presented by Dr Dan Sullivan.
This recording is of the launch event for the Guide to Temporary Traffic Management held on 11 December 2019.
Austroads’ Guide to Temporary Traffic Management (AGTTM) details contemporary temporary traffic management requirements for Australia and New Zealand practitioners. It contains guidance and instructions for planning, designing and implementing temporary traffic management to ensure the safety of employees and contractors working in or near traffic, and a safe environment for all road users.
The culmination of a four-year collaborative project between Austroads, Australasian transport agencies and industry, the Guide will help to harmonise temporary traffic management practice in Australia and New Zealand.
The Guide to Temporary Traffic Management comprises: • Part 1: Introduction • Part 2: Traffic Management Planning • Part 3: Static Worksites • Part 4: Mobile Works • Part 5: Short Term Low Impact Worksites • Part 6: Field Staff – Implementation and Operation • Part 7: Traffic Controllers • Part 8: Processes and Procedures • Part 9: Sample Layouts • Part 10: Supporting Guidance.
Presented by: • Neil Scales OBE, Austroads Chair and Director-General Department of Transport and Main Roads • Louise Van Ristell, Executive Officer, Traffic Management Association of Australia • Dr Dan Sullivan, Austroads Safety at Road Worksites Project Manager.
Download the Guide at austroads.com.au/publications/temporary-traffic-management/agttm-set
This webinar provides an overview of ways to more accurately model heavy vehicle movements during interrupted traffic flows in Australia and New Zealand.
It covers:
- background and results of the Austroads project
- heavy vehicle characteristics relevant to intersection capacity such as length and width, clearance space, acceleration and deceleration
- heavy vehicle parameter development for traffic modelling software - SIDRA, LINSIG, VISSIM and AIMSUN, based on video survey and calibration.
The webinar presented on 9 December 2019 by Dr Young Li and TK Kim.
This webinar provides an overview of the first version of the standardised condition and performance datasets for intelligent transport systems (ITS) assets.
ITS assets are technologies placed in vehicles and infrastructure to improve the safety and efficiency of transport systems.
You will learn about:
- how to define ITS asset criticality
- the gaps in the ITS asset data that currently exist
- case studies on jurisdictional data collection and standardised KPIs for performance reporting
- benefit-cost-analysis for the implementation of the data standard
- how Auckland Motorways adopted the data standard and the insights and benefits gained.
The webinar was presented on 5 December 2019, by Dr Clarissa Han and Dean Parker.
This webinar outlines how local road managers can use the data standard and engage with collaboration activities, to provide access to new asset management and maintenance insights with minimal impact on workload.
It covers:
- the Austroads Data Standard’s design, and definitions, and the multiple ways it can be used
- how harmonised data sets are being used to promote benefits at local and national levels
- how this supports national transport and infrastructure reform actions
- how the collaboration process works, and the insights gained from local government currently participating
- how harmonised data sets provide new asset management insights.
The webinar was presented on 29 November 2019 by Angus Draheim, Georgia O’Cianain, Ashish Shah and Muhammad Khatree.
This webinar provides an overview of the gaps in current physical and digital road infrastructure to support connected and automated vehicles (CAVs) on Australian and New Zealand highways and freeways.
It covers:
- what infrastructure readiness is required for CAVs
- results of the extensive field audit
- how current infrastructure standards compare to the requirements for CAV readiness
- what actions are appropriate to take now given the uncertainty that remains
- how this project complements other Austroads projects to build a more complete picture of progress readiness for CAVs.
The webinar was presented on 7 November 2019 by John Wall, Andrew Somers and Anthony Germanchev.
This webinar provides an overview of an Austroads project that investigated whether cements with elevated limestone content would perform satisfactorily in ambient-cured and precast concretes subjected to aggressive exposure conditions.
The webinar was presented on 15 October 2019 by Dr Ahmad Shayan and Fred Andrews-Phaedonos.
This webinar provides an overview of the ‘Vehicles as a Workplace: Work Health & Safety Guide' from a safety, regulatory and industry perspective.
The Vehicles as a Workplace Guide provides practical risk management guidance for individuals and organisations who use vehicles on public roads for work.
The guide describes a process for dealing with road traffic hazards in line with work health and safety (WHS) legislation and road traffic safety principles. It covers all vehicle use in road traffic and complements other legislative requirements that apply to businesses whose primary purpose is transport, such as bus, truck or taxi operators.
The webinar was presented on 9 October 2019 by Martin Small, Grant Phillips, Mace Hartley and Peter Daly.
This webinar provides an overview of an Austroads project that analysed telematics data to explore how heavy vehicles use Key Freight Routes.
It covers:
- the methodology used in preparing the research
- outcomes of discussions with industry and other stakeholders
- key recommendations from the report
- recent updates to the National Telematics Framework which support the recommendations including: new telematics applications at different levels of assurance, release of the Telematics Data Exchange, and accessibility of data to road managers and other stakeholders.
The webinar was presented on 3 October 2019 by Tim Renowden and Gavin Hill.
This webinar provides an overview of the causes and contributing factors behind road crashes in regional and remote areas, and strategic guidance to identify the best approaches to eliminate harm.
It covers:
- key current road safety issues in regional and remote areas based on crash data and the research literature
- stakeholder perspectives on current issues
- evidence-based measures and new initiatives for improving road safety in regional and remote areas
- recommendations, aligned with the Safe System approach, that provide strategic directions for future actions
- future opportunities for regional and remote road safety.
The webinar was presented on 1 October 2019 by Melissa Watts and Dr Lisa Wundersitz.
This webinar provides an overview of an Austroads project that examined the passage of dangerous good through Australasian road tunnels, and continuing studies on this topic.
It covers:
- the background of the project
- a standardised methodology to guide the assessment of risk and the variations between existing tunnels and tunnels entering the design phase
- current national and international practice
- the next stage of the study.
The webinar was presented on 12 September 2019 by Nigel Casey and Bruce Dandie.
This webinar provides an overview of the concept of Mobility as a Service (MaaS) and the opportunities it presents for transport agencies in Australia and New Zealand (ANZ).
Mobility as a Service refers to the shift from personally-owned transport modes to mobility solutions that are consumed as a service. This project explored industry definitions, service characteristics, global best practice, and ways ANZ transport agencies are harnessing the risks and opportunities associated with MaaS.
It covers:
- why there is no single definition of MaaS
- international and local transport agency experience in MaaS initiatives
- common features of the mobility and service environments that support MaaS
- potential roles for the public sector in supporting MaaS outcomes.
The webinar was presented by Mary Haverland and Pete Davis.
This webinar provides an overview of the new Guide to Road Tunnels Part 4: Retrofitting Tunnels and the requirements for developing a project to upgrade a road tunnel.
It covers:
- why a retrofitting project may be required for a tunnel
- the types of retrofitting projects
- the process of developing a retrofitting project
- acceptable standards for retrofitting
- retrofitting or refurbishing individual components of the tunnel or tunnel systems
- achieving energy efficiency in tunnel construction and operation by adopting appropriate solutions
- case studies on the M2 Norfolk Twin Tunnels NSW and the refurbishment of the Terrace Tunnel, New Zealand.
The webinar was presented on 29 August 2019 presented by Les Louis.
This webinar, presented on 22 August 2019, provides an overview of the key changes to the Guide to Pavement Technology Part 5: Pavement Evaluation and Treatment Design, and the significant advances in the thickness design of structural treatments for flexible road pavements.
It covers:
- an overview of the pavement evaluation process and selection of treatment options
- use of Travelling Speed Deflectometer (TSD) to design granular overlays
- new procedures for mechanistic-empirical design of strengthening treatments.
Presented by Geoff Jameson and Dr Michael Moffatt.
This webinar provides an overview of an Austroads project that developed a new sprayed seal binder cracking test and compared the performance of polymer modified binders (PMBs).
It covers:
- background of the project
- sprayed seal binder cracking test
- comparisons of the performance of S20E/A20E and S25E/A15E grade PMBs in asphalt and sprayed seals
- proposed changes to AGPT/T190 based on the results of the project.
The webinar was presented on 8 August 2019 by Robert Urquhart.
This webinar provides an overview of the new General Conditions of Contract for Construction - National Capital Works 4 (NCW4), released by Austroads and the Australian Procurement and Construction Council (APCC).
It covers:
- rational for developing NCW4
- principles underpinning NCW4
- key clauses in NCW4.
The webinar was presented on 25 July 2019 by Richard Edwards.
This webinar provides an overview of the opportunities to apply artificial intelligence to road network operations.
It covers:
- definitions of artificial intelligence and machine learning
- applications in road network operations
- limitations
- adoption in organisations.
Presented was presented by Matthew Gallaugher and Arash Kaviani.
This webinar provides an overview of an Austroads project that compared the test properties of seven commercially available cutter oils with their sprayed seal performance.
It covers:
- results of the project
- types of cutter oils included in the study
- cutter oil test properties and their relationship to sprayed seal performance
- proposed changes to Australian Standard 3568 based on the results of the project and input from Austroads Bituminous Surfacings Working Group members.
The webinar was presented on 11 July 2019 by Robert Urquhart.
This webinar provides an overview of the 2018 edition of the Austroads Guide to Asset Management.
It covers:
- road infrastructure scene in which the Guide operates
- definition of asset management in a road agency context
- reference to the ISO standards that the Guide is founded on
- core concepts of the Guide
- integrated asset management framework approach.
The webinar was presented on 4 July 2019 by Dr Tim Martin.
This webinar provides an overview of the Lean approach to construction project delivery.
It covers
- lean principles, practices and techniques
- key differences of traditional and lean construction
- case studies demonstrating the outcomes that can be achieved
- the current state of lean construction in Australia.
This webinar was presented on 16 May 2019 by Christina Levinson.
This webinar gives an overview of the key changes to the Guide to Road Tunnels Part 2: Planning, Design and Commissioning.
It covers
- the design criteria for pavements in tunnels
- how the pavement may form the tunnel floor structure
- typical pavement profiles in tunnels
- the common pavement wearing surfaces
- allowances to consider for the construction and maintenance of the tunnel and pavement.
The webinar presented on 30 April 2019 by George Vorobieff.
This webinar gives as overview of the key changes to the Guide and the significant advances in the areas of stabilisation or road pavements.
It covers improvements to the Guide including:
- categories of stabilised materials
- binder selection
- mix design of cementitiously stabilised materials
- mix design of lime stabilised subgrades
- mix design of foamed bitumen stabilised materials.
The webinar was presented presented on 11 April 2019 by Geoff Jameson.
This webinar gives an overview of an Austroads pilot project to improve the measurement and reporting of serious injury crashes.
It covers
- background and objectives of the study
- the data provision, preparation and analysis
- statistical results such as non-fatal hospitalised roads injury cases
- conclusions from Stage 1 of the project and recommendations.
The webinar was presented on 4 April 2019 by Professor James Harrison and Dr Angela Watson.
This webinar provides an overview of Infrastructure Risk Rating - a simple road assessment methodology designed to assess road safety risk at a network level, primarily as an input to the speed limit setting process.
It covers:
- case studies demonstrating speed management interventions that were successfully applied in Australia and New Zealand
- good practice guidance for engagement and consultation to effectively implement speed management interventions
- the Infrastructure Risk Rating Tool which allows Infrastructure Risk Rating to be calculated for a road segment by selecting key road and roadside attributes
- recommendations towards the implementation of the findings of the project.
The webinar was presented on 26 March 2019 by Haris Zia and Dale Harris.
This webinar provides an overview of the new Guide to Road Safety Part 6: Managing Road Safety Audits.
It covers
- the defined roles, requirements and expectations of the Project Sponsor, Project Manager and Audit Team Leader towards an optimal outcome
- where road safety audits sit within contemporary operating environments and contexts and how we can best embed and integrate the road safety audit process within Safe System thinking
- how findings (risks) and treatment options can be categorised by the extent of their ‘alignment’ to the Safe System
- the next steps - the consolidation of the new Part 6 (management) and Part 6A (implementation)
The webinar was presented on 21 March 2019 by Paul Hillier, Kenn Beer and Joseph Le.
This webinar provides an update on Austroads’ project to develop the data to support the Heavy Vehicle Road Reforms.
It covers
- the background of the heavy vehicle road reforms
- how the Heavy Vehicle Infrastructure Rating is calculated and used
- online tools that have made the process of gathering data, producing ratings and sharing results easy and practical
- current efforts to include local government roads in the asset register.
The webinar was presented on 14 March 2019 by Ulysses Ai.
This webinar provides an overview of Austroads’ long-term pavement performance study.
It covers
- establishment and long-term monitoring of an in-service pavement test section
- the develop pavement performance road deterioration (RD) and works effects (WE) models
- methodology, benefits and outcomes of the study.
The webinar was presented on 7 March 2019 by Lith Choummanivong and Dr Tim Martin.
This webinar provides an overview of the benefits associated with passing lanes for guidance for practitioners.
It covers:
- safety impacts of passing lanes, particularly statistics on crash rate reductions, speed and headway, and overtaking behaviour
- operational impacts of passing lanes on average speed and per cent time spent following (PTSF)
- road user perception of passing lane impacts and valuation of level-of-service (LOS)
- findings of the Austroads project.
The webinar was presented on 5 March 2019 by Dr Ian Espada and Dr Chris Stokes.
This webinar presents an overview of the barriers to driver licensing program access experienced by Indigenous people and ideas on potential common underpinnings for future policy and program design, data collection and reporting.
It covers:
- why improving access to driver training and licensing programs for Indigenous people is important
- what the literature and jurisdictional experience say about what works, what doesn't and why and what this suggests about future program and policy priorities and engagement of other harder to engage groups
- a program logic approach to achieving future program improvement and national coherence
- a framework for the adoption of national policy principles to underpin program design and implementation
- a proposed national minimum data set to support program assessment and improvement.
The webinar was presented on 27 February 2019 by Paul Rajan.
This webinar provides an overview of the Austroads Guidelines for the Provision of Heavy Vehicle Rest Area Facilities.
It covers:
- the types of heavy vehicle rest areas
- assessing the need and prioritisation for heavy vehicle rest areas
- principles for good heavy vehicle rest area design
- tools used to communicate rest opportunities to drivers.
The webinar was presented on 14 February 2019, by David Green and Mandi Mees.
This webinar provides an overview of a Safe System review of the Austroads Guide to Traffic Management (AGTM).
It covers:
- where there is an opportunity to further embed Safe System into the AGTM series based on recent research
- the new and revised content to address many of the safe system gaps in the AGTM to strengthen the guidance relating to treatments and their likely effectiveness in aligning with Safe System philosophy
- recommendations towards the implementation of the findings.
The webinar was presented on 7 February 2019 by Paul Durdin and Dave Smith.
This webinar provides an overview of Austroads' study that proposes a ride quality index of roads for heavy vehicles, a heavy vehicle equivalent of the International Roughness Index (IRI) for cars.
It covers: • the background of the study • a proposed index for objectively measuring the ride quality of freight vehicles • the design and conditions of roads influencing subjective perceptions of safety and comfort.
The webinar was presented on 31 January 2019 by Ulysses Ai.
This webinar provides an overview of Austroads' assessment of options for the development of a C-ITS Compliance Assessment Framework in Australia and New Zealand.
It covers • background of the study • C-ITS state of play • C-ITS Compliance Assessment Framework model options and assessment • key findings from the literature review and stakeholder consultations • main conclusions and recommended future work.
The webinar was presented on 11 December 2018, by Niko Limans, Jesper Engdahl, Dr Cornelie van Driel and David Green.
This webinar provides an overview of Austroads’ evaluation of the European Telecommunications Standards Institute Threat, Vulnerability and Risk Analysis (ETSI TVRA) for the European C-ITS platform in the Australian context.
It covers
- background of the study
- areas related to the EU C-ITS platform and their implications in an Austroads context
- areas of interest not covered in the ETSI TVRA
- central ITS stations, personal ITS stations and cellular communications
- issues and recommendations to address them.
The webinar was presented on 6 December 2018 by David Green and Niko Limans.
This webinar provides an overview of a framework to help assess the value of maintenance and renewal works, consistent with capital investments.
The webinar was presented on 27 November 2018 by Martin Chow.
This webinar outlines the benefits of government working with industry and business to change delivery patterns by extending delivery hours.
The webinar was presented on 22 November 2018 by Samantha Taylor and Dr Darren Wishart.
This webinar outlines the strategic context on the supply of road operator data for connected and automated vehicles use in Australia, and the recommended next steps to navigate through this evolving field.
The webinar was presented on 13 November 2018 by Chris Jones, Andrew Somers and John Wall.
This webinar provides an overview of an Austroads study to develop suggested good practice for a consistent, efficient and safe approach to emergency egress signage within Australasian road tunnels.
It covers:
- how signage supports the requirements of the relevant phases of the evacuation process
- comparisons of signage within existing or under construction tunnels in Australasia and their alignment with local standards and international practice
- the results and conclusions of the assessment, including the recommended emergency evacuation signage for use within Australasian road tunnels
- other elements identified that are important in the context of supporting the evacuation process.
The webinar was presented on 9 November 2018 by Tony Peglas.
This webinar provides an overview of the key changes to the Guide to Pavement Technology Parts 4F and 4K, and the significant advances in the areas of binder specifications and sprayed seal design.
It covers: • technical revisions to reflect current specifications, guidelines and best practice • outcomes of recent research • double/double seal design • initial deal design and additional available treatments • low volume seal design.
The webinar was presented on 31 October 2018 by Dr Young Choi and Steve Patrick.
This webinar provides an overview of an Austroads study into Traffic Sign Recognition Systems in Australia and New Zealand.
It covers the findings from real world automated vehicle trials and insights into the recommended actions for road operators, manufacturers and industry bodies.
The webinar was presented on 23 October 2018, by Chris Jones, Mark Rowland and Yasmin Roper.
This webinar presents challenges around the introduction of automated heavy vehicles to remote and regional areas and the opportunities for future their use in Australia and New Zealand.
It covers the views of international experts on:
• cellular connectivity and digital infrastructure requirements • geofencing and managing access • physical infrastructure impact and requirements • platooning operations and technology advancement.
The webinar was presented on 25 September 2018, by Anthony Germanchev, Dr Ronny Kutadinata and Dr Steve Shladover.
This webinar provides an overview of the first edition of Austroads Guide to Project Delivery Part 5: Road Construction Quality Assurance.
It covers:
- the background to the Guide, and concerns with current Quality Assurance contracts
- measures proposed in the Guide
- what is involved in implementation of the Guide.
The webinar was presented on 20 September 2018 by Peter Balfe.
This webinar, provides an overview of Austroads’ Guideline for Minimum Levels of Componentisation for Road Infrastructure Assets, and how to apply it.
It covers: • the need for the Guideline • the inconsistencies in current industry practice • how the Guideline can be used to drive harmonisation for terminology, asset classification structure and item definition • implementation considerations and associated benefits.
The webinar was presented on 11 September 2018 by Gary Rykers and Andrew Golding.
This webinar, summarises the findings of Austroads’ Australia and New Zealand Roads Capability Analysis 2017-2027.
It covers • current breakdowns of the roads skilled workforce in Australia and New Zealand • state of play and outlook for roads activities and skills demand • insights from industry survey and interviews on existing capability concerns • how new technologies will drive skills demand, and where the greatest risks to capability lie • how the broader roads industry can respond positively to the workforce skills challenge.
The webinar was presented on 6 September 2018, by Adrian Hart, BIS Oxford Economics.
This webinar, outlines the impact of BIM technology on location referencing and the proposed new theoretical framework to develop a National Location Reference Hub.
It covers: • importance of critical business models for Austroads asset management harmonisation • interpretations of location, location reference methods (LRM) and location reference systems (LRS) • roles of the LRM families • significance of routable networks and the implications of dynamic location reference standards from intelligent transportation systems (ITS) on static asset management • potential for development using open systems and principals-IFC, Semantic Web, OpenLR • role that a National Hub could play in future management of road asset network infrastructure.
The webinar was presented on 25 July 2018 by Dr Russell Kenley and Dr Richard Yeo.
This webinar outlines ways to optimise the use of marginal and non-standard materials and gain best value from the successful performance of standard materials.
It covers: • applying a proposed assessment process to a wider suite of material types for use in sealed roads • future directions in this research • an evaluation framework for materials, including improvements through different forms of stabilisation • case studies that better assess the optimum use of non-standard road-building materials evaluated on a life-cycle cost basis.
The webinar was presented on 17 July 2018 by Mick Savage, Tyrone Toole and Zia Rice.
This webinar outlines a set of principles for the presentation of Austroads' Network Performance Indicators which could underpin increased use and application across road agencies in Australasia for both current and future iterations.
It covers: • how performance is measured in other areas and sectors • eight key principles for presentation of road performance data • insights from an industry practice review • implications of the principles for the Network Performance Indicators.
The webinar was presented on 12 July 2018 by Ben Mason, Paul Carter and Callum Hooper.
This webinar provides an overview of progress and key lessons learnt from three major Connected and Automated Vehicles (CAV) trials in Australia.
It covers: • ARRB/ConnectEast/VicRoads development of road certification criteria for partially automated vehicles on motorways through testing of a range of vehicles equipped with traffic sign recognition, lane keeping assistance, and adaptive cruise control. • Queensland’s Connected and Automated Vehicle Initiative’s C-ITS Pilot which is testing eight C-ITS use-cases on 500 vehicles on arterial and motorway roads in Ipswich. • NSW Centre for Road Safety Cooperative Intelligent Transport Initiative’s (CITI) project which is the first large scale evaluation of C-ITS applications in heavy vehicles.
The webinar was presented on 3 July 2018 by Chris Jones, Niko Limans, Samantha Taylor, Dr Miranda Blogg and John Wall.
This webinar provides an overview of a guideline that aims to provide asset management practitioners with an understanding of the factors that contribute to enabling and sustaining continual improvement.
It covers: • the factors that contribute to achieving and sustaining continual improvement. • how to create an environment conducive to continual improvement • approaches to identify, evaluation and prioritise continual improvement initiatives • how to implement and monitor initiative to sustain and build on success.
The webinar was presented on 28 June 2018 by Aneurin Hughes and Stephen Walker.
This webinar summarises the results of a domestic and international review of recently-developed ITS technologies.
It covers: • technologies that were evaluated, including a qualitative indication of their costs and benefits • evaluation methodology that was developed to evaluate the quality of published ITS performance studies.
The webinar was presented on 19 June 2018 by Dr Glenn Geers.
This webinar provides an overview of the updated Austroads microsurfacing guidelines and model specification.
It covers: • major changes to the microsurfacing guidelines and specifications • related test methods • materials and emerging technologies.
The webinar was presented on 14 June 2018 by Steve Patrick.
This webinar provides an introduction to the Pedestrian Facility Selection Tool and a demonstration on how to use it with a fully worked example. The tool is designed to help Australian and New Zealand practitioners select the most appropriate type of pedestrian crossing based on walkability, safety and economic outcomes.
It covers: • the research and analytical models used to inform the tool • recent improvements to the functionality • how to access and use the tool in an applied context.
The webinar was presented on 29 May 2018 by Dave Smith and Dr Stacy Rendall.
This webinar provides best practice recommendations for the development of Road Safety Infrastructure Programs (RSIPs) that align with the safe system approach.
It covers: • a best practice structure for the development and implementation of RSIPs • guidance to demonstrate how program development and implementation can be improved to make greater fatal and serious casualty savings from road safety infrastructure investment • case studies of current best and good practice • recommendations towards the implementation of findings including benchmarking industry progress.
The webinar was presented on 15 May 2018 by Paul Durdin and Dave Smith.
This webinar, provides an overview of the new Austroads compendium of knowledge on Safe System treatments and real world experience in the practical application of solutions that can mitigate crash severity. It outlines information covered in a series of workshops on the translation of the Safe System approach, enabling attendees to consider the application of the theories onto their own road networks.
It covers the: • new Austroads compendium on Safe System infrastructure relating to planning, designing and managing roads and roadsides • origins of the Safe System and current implementation • Safe System solutions that can be used to address key crash types • tools that have been developed to help align infrastructure projects with Safe System outcomes.
The webinar was presented on 10 May 2018 by Associate Professor Jeremy Woolley and Dr Blair Turner.
This webinar outlines the findings of an Austroads geopolymer concrete project and a current update of the use, monitoring and specification of geopolymer concrete by VicRoads over the past nine years.
It covers: • geopolymer concrete, its constituents and how it is manufactured • formulation and testing of numerous geopolymer recipes, and investigation of workability, strength development, mechanical behaviour, durability properties, abrasion resistance and ductility of reinforced geopolymer concrete • the introduction of geopolymer concrete into VicRoads with several trial structural applications, general paving works and evaluation of performance.
The webinar was presented on 1 May 2018 by Dr Ahmad Shayan and Fred Andrews-Phaedonos.
This webinar outlines the contemporary barriers to local road access for high productivity freight vehicles, and some of the options available for local road managers when considering road access.
It covers: • how road network classification and mapping is progressing around the country • most common barriers to access as reported by stakeholders • several case studies demonstrating how others have overcome access barriers • recommendations to improve local road access nationally.
The webinar was presented on 27 March 2018 by Rob Di Cristoforo.
This webinar provides an overview of the major changes to the design of heavy-duty flexible pavements, including the new: • axle-strain approach central to the mechanistic-empirical design method • definitions of design traffic • characterisation of cemented material and asphalt.
The potential structural contribution of lime-stabilised subgrades for flexible pavements, and minor updates to concrete pavement jointing details are also discussed.
The webinar was presented on 9 March 2018 by Dr Michael Moffatt.
This webinar provides an overview of a project Austroads is undertaking to identify gaps in current practice for the performance characterisation of asphalt mixes. The ultimate aim is to develop a harmonised national performance-based asphalt specification framework that would take full advantage of the enhanced performance characteristics of current and emerging asphalt technologies. The webinar was presented on 27 February 2018 by Joe Grobler.
This webinar outlines the findings of an Austroads project on the modelling of high productivity vehicles in metropolitan areas. The webinar was presented by Dr Ian Espada on 13 February 2018.
This webinar outlines ways to improve safety and achieve Safe System outcomes on mixed use arterial roads. It was presented by Dr Blair Turner and Kenn Beer on 8 February 2018.
The webinar provides an overview of the key findings of an Austroads project on the weighing of oversized and overmass vehicle combinations using portable scales. It outlines the vehicles and weighing methods that were used in the field testing and discusses the process of turning the test data into a workable set of Mass Measurement Adjustments. The webinar was presented by Anthony Germanchev and Philip Roper on 12 December 2017.
This webinar provides an overview of the key findings of a strategic review of the Austroads Guide to Traffic Management. It is particularly beneficial for users of the Guide to Traffic Management who are interested in the future considerations of the Guide series. The webinar was presented by David Green and Natalie Lockwood on 7 December 2017.
This webinar provides an overview of the key changes to the Austroads Guide to Traffic Management Part 3, such as use cases, impact and some supporting techniques for the use of emerging data sources; discussion and development of high-level modelling guidelines; and latest research and initiative in the traffic capacity analysis area. The webinar was preseted by Dr Clarissa Han on 30 November 2017.
This webinar provides an overview of new guidelines to help network operations planning staff develop a Concept of Operations (ConOps), a best practice resource. The webinar was presented by Mark Rowland on 21 November 2017.
This webinar provides an overview of the key changes to the Austroads Guide to Traffic Management Part 13, such as updated information on driver workload and the Safe System, and incorporation of a discussion on human factors. It is particularly useful for practitioners dealing with road safety aspects of traffic management in the road environment. The webinar was presented by David Green on 16 November 2017.
This webinar provides an overview of the key changes to: • Guide to Traffic Management Part 6: Intersections, Interchanges and Crossings • Guide to Road Design Part 4: Intersections and Crossings – General • Guide to Road Design Part 4A: Unsignalised and Signalised Intersections.
The webinar was presented by Peter Aumann and Lisa Steinmetz on 6 November 2017.
This webinar provides an overview of current and contemporary road transport management practices in Australasia and a harmonised framework. The webinar was presented by Dr Aut Karndacharuk and Asif Hassan on 26 October 2017.
This webinar provides an overview of the findings of an Austroads research report into the safety benefits of Cooperative ITS and Automated Driving in Australia and New Zealand. The webinar was presented by Chris Jones and Dr David Logan on 23 October 2017.
This webinar provides guidance on improved on-road public transport drawn from the experience of jurisdictions in Australia, New Zealand and overseas. The webinar was presented by Alison Lee and Graham McCabe on 26 September 2017.
This webinar provides an overview of the key changes to the Austroads Guide to Traffic Management Part 5, such as the incorporation of concepts such as Movement and Place, Network Operation Planning, road allocation and the establishment of speed limits. It is particularly useful for practitioners dealing with mid-block road management, including speed management. The webinar was presented by David Green on 12 September 2017.
This webinar provides an overview of contemporary local and international incident management practices and a harmonised traffic incident management (TIM) framework that supports network operations planning. The webinar was presented by Dr Aut Karndacharuk and Asif Hassan on 29 August 2017.
This webinar provides an overview of the tangible benefits to the Australian economy that efforts to improve supply chain visibility can bring. The webinar was presented by Julian Breheny, Rose Elphick-Darling and David McNeil on 15 August 2017.
This webinar provides an overview of how Community Service Obligations (CSOs) could be applied to the roads sector and how establishing a CSO framework could help clarify road funding arrangements. The webinar was presented by Matthew Clarke, Gavan Dwyer and Dr Tim Martin on 29 June 2017.
This webinar provides an overview of the National ITS Architecture (NIA) which provides a common approach for planning, defining, and integrating intelligent transportation systems. The webinar was presented by Warwick Sweeney on 20 June 2017.
This webinar provides an overview of the challenges posed by the operation of automated vehicles on public roads. The webinar was presented by Stuart Ballingall and Scott Benjamin on 16 June 2017.
This webinar explains how the Austroads Data Standard is designed, the data definitions it contains, and the multiple ways it can be used; how harmonised data sets are being used to promote benefits at the local and national levels through case studies; and the plans to support data standard adoption through a range of tools and data collaboration ventures. This webinar was presented by Angus Draheim, Richard Yeo, David Darwin, Dawn Inglis and Michael Zhang and Justin Weligamage on 1 June 2017.
This webinar provides an introduction to the Austroads Pedestrian Facility Selection Tool and demonstrate how to use it with a fully worked example. The tool is designed to help Australian and New Zealand practitioners select the most appropriate type of pedestrian crossing based on walkability, safety and economic outcomes.
The webinar was presented by Dave Smith Steve Abley on 16 May 2017.
This webinar addresses the road safety and infrastructure challenges posed by the operation of agricultural vehicles and equipment on public roads. The webinar was presented by Adam Ritzinger on 28 April 2017.
This webinar provides an overview of the Risk Indicator, a tool designed to identify and support investment in ‘Life Line’ freight routes. This webinar was presented by Steve Manders and Craig Gorlick on 24 February 2017.
This webinar is by NZ Transport Agency on New Zealand's Speed Management Guide. The webinar was presented by Glenn Bunting and Diane Gamble 14 December 2016.
This webinar provides an overview of the emerging trends in crash involvement among older road users, aged 75 years and over. It was presented by Dr Matthew Baldock on 24 November 2016.
This two-part webinar provides an overview of the updated Austroads Guide to Road Design Part 3: Geometric Design. This second session covers horizontal and vertical alignment, and superelevation. The webinar was presented by Peter Aumann on 25 October 2016.
This two-part webinar provides an overview of the updated Austroads Guide to Road Design Part 3: Geometric Design. This first session covers design objectives, speeds and cross sections. The webinar was presented by Peter Aumann on 18 October 2016.
This webinar introduces the Australasian Pedestrian Facility Selection Tool. The tool is designed to help Australian and New Zealand practitioners select the most appropriate type of pedestrian crossing based on walkability, safety and economic outcomes.
The webinar was presented by Steve Abley and Dave Smith on 10 March 2015.
This webinar provides an introduction to the Austroads Design Vehicles and Turning Path Templates. The vehicle turning path templates are primarily used in the design of intersections. The show plots of vehicle wheelpaths and the path traced by other relevant points on the vehicle or load at different speeds. The webinar was presented by Peter Eady in 2013.