AustroadsNews | September 2017 

Welcome to the September 2017 edition of AustroadsNews. If you have been forwarded this email you can subscribe here to receive future updates.

Contents

• Austroads Website Redevelopment: Have Your Say

• Road safety environment guidance updated

• Improving railway road design for heavy vehicles

• Achieving road design objectives

• Prioritising on-road public transport

• Harmonised road transport management framework enables integrated system planning

• Sprayed seal binder cracking test shows success with unaged binders

• Verifying the new Austroads sprayed seal design guidelines

• Testing of supplementary cementitious materials can't be fast-tracked

• BITRE Road Safety Reports

• ARSC2017

• Upcoming workshops + conferences

Austroads Website Redevelopment: Have Your Say

We are in the process of redeveloping Austroads' online presence with the aim of improving the way we share information, better explain the benefits and outcomes of our work, and find new opportunities to engage through digital technology. 

As part of the redevelopment, we would like to capture as much input from the users of our website and Guides as possible. In particular, we would like to understand how you use our websites and how we can better deliver services and information to you. 

Part of the redevelopment will include providing the Guide content as web pages, making navigation easier and opening opportunities for new types of content to be developed. When the Guides are online, they will be made freely available to everyone.

If you use our websites or publications we would really appreciate your feedback  via an online survey - it should only take 10 minutes of your time to complete and will be available until Friday 13 October 2017.

Any questions, please contact Elaena Gardner.

Road safety environment guidance updated

Austroads has published an updated edition of the Guide to Traffic Management Part 13: Road Safety Environment bringing the guidance in line with the latest Safe System research.

The Guide emphasises the need for the road system to provide an environment which assists road users to behave effectively and safely. It considers the role of traffic management in influencing road user behaviour, and provides guidance for practitioners specifically on road safety aspects of traffic management.

 A webinar on 16 November 2017 will highlight some of the key changes and will be particularly useful for practitioners dealing with road safety aspects of traffic management in the road environment. Join in a live Q&A with the Guide author to ask questions about the recent updates.  Register now.

Improving railway road design for heavy vehicles

Crashes involving heavy vehicles have been identified as a major safety issue in Australia and New Zealand with the volume of heavy vehicles expected to significantly increase over the next five to 10 years.

Austroads has published a report that identifies road design improvements to better cater for the safe passage of heavy vehicles through railway level crossings.

Several opportunities for improvements were identified, principally to guidance on applying the sight lines and sight distances for a range of approaches, particularly on curved roads. Other improvements suggested include the addition of a short stacking warning sign and improving delineation by having all road approaches sealed to enable pavement markings, such as RAIL X and edgelines.

The report includes recommended amendments to the Guide to Road Design Part 4 and AS 1742.7:2016.

Achieving road design objectives

Austroads has published a report that identifies improvements to guidance, education and practice to ensure the fundamental objectives of road design are achieved in new and existing road projects.

The  project identified factors that contribute to the fundamental objectives of road design not being achieved.

The project concluded that the design guidance in Australia is technically sound but it does not adequately inform designers how to achieve the objectives of road design while balancing competing project objectives, nor how to evaluate a design to determine if the objectives of road design have been achieved.

Prioritising on-road public transport

Austroads has published a report documenting techniques and technologies in use to improve the efficiency of on-road public transport

Some of these techniques and technologies are explicitly documented in guidelines and design manuals used by the Australian and New Zealand road and transport authorities, and some have been applied in discrete projects but are not published or broadly available for others to replicate and use.

Priority treatments examined in the report include:

• Bus road space allocation including dedicated busways, bus-only streets, bus only lane, bus lane, peak bus lane and queue jump 
• LRT road space allocation including tramways, low vertical elements, high vertical elements, grade separation and kerb-side running
• Signal priority including passive and active signals, T-Lights and B-Lights for advanced green time, and extended green time 
• Stop placement and design including kerb outstands, stop on intersection departure side, kerb access stops, centre island stops and trafficable platforms.

The report includes case studies and commentary on common best practice in Australian and New Zealand, highlighting benefits to journey time reliability, travel time and other indicators.

Join the report authors for a webinar on Tuesday 26 September. No charge but registration is essential.  Register now.

Harmonised road transport management framework enables integrated system planning

Road transport management (RTM) practice draws on knowledge from strategic planning, network operation, road safety, asset management and land use planning along with transport and vehicle technology.

With the emergence of Intelligent Transport Systems and connected and autonomous vehicles, RTM practice is rapidly evolving. 

Austroads has published a RTM framework that will enable an integrated approach to road transport management ensuring a safe, efficient, reliable and sustainable road transport system.

The framework presents the multifaceted aspects of RTM in a systematic and harmonised manner.  

 A webinar on 26 October 2017 will provide an overview of current and contemporary RTM practices in Australasia and the harmonised RTM framework. No charge but registration is essential.  Register now.

Sprayed seal binder cracking test shows success with unaged binders

Cracking is one of the major causes of deterioration of sprayed seals in Australia and New Zealand but there is no well‑established laboratory test which can be used to rank the low temperature cracking performance of different binders.

Austroads commissioned ARRB to develop a laboratory sprayed seal binder cracking test which can be used to measure the relative fatigue cracking resistance of thin binder films.

The binder films tested have a thicknesses comparable to the thicknesses of the binder films in sprayed seals (1–3 mm).

The results obtained in the study indicate that the sprayed seal binder cracking tests were suitable for characterising the fatigue cracking performance of thin films of unaged (i.e. fresh) binders. Further work is needed to find suitable test conditions to characterise the properties of laboratory aged binders.

Verifying the new Austroads sprayed seal design guidelines

Recent Austroads research to maximise the performance of sprayed seals, suggested changes to the design process for low volume roads (< 100 v/l/d) and the application of initial treatments.

Observations of the performance of sprayed seal pavements designed and constructed using the new procedure were needed to verify the appropriateness of the new design methods.

Practitioners in the Northern Territory and Victoria have made significant contributions to the development of the new sprayed seal design guidelines, and have been trialling these approaches.

Austroads has published a report detailing inspections of these sites to evaluate the appropriateness of the new guidelines (which propose a revised basic voids factor (Vf) and initial sealing design approach) and validate their underpinning assumptions.

Testing of supplementary cementitious materials can't be fast-tracked

Austroads has published the results of tests to investigate whether the much faster accelerated mortar bar test could be employed instead of the slow concrete prism test to evaluate supplementary cementitious materials.

The tests identify the levels of supplementary cementitious materials, such as fly ash, slag or silica fume, required to suppress damaging expansion in concrete caused by alkali-aggregate reaction and avoid prohibitive repair costs.

Overall, the comparison between the two methods indicated that the already-practised period of 21 days seems to be the shortest time that the effects of supplementary cementitious materials can be detected, and produces the best agreement between the results of the two methods. The results also showed that the dosage of supplementary cementitious materials for alkali-aggregate reaction suppression was highly dependent on the nature of the aggregate. As a result, a universal rule cannot be prescribed.

BITRE Reports

Road deaths Australia—monthly bulletins

Released mid month - Latest August 2017
This bulletin contains current counts and summaries of road crash deaths and fatal road crashes in Australia. It is produced monthly and published on BITRE's website on or around the 14th of each month. Data are sourced from the road traffic or police authorities in each jurisdiction.

Measuring infrastructure asset performance and customer satisfaction: A review of existing frameworks

Released September 2017
This report introduces and explores issues surrounding infrastructure performance measurement that should be considered in the context of providing greater consistency across infrastructure asset types.

Infrastructure and Transport PPPs and Privatisation in Australia

Released August 2017
This information sheet provides a list of infrastructure and transport-related Public Private Partnerships and privatisations in Australia since 1980. To the Bureau of Infrastructure Transport and Regional Economics’ (BITRE) knowledge, this is the most comprehensive list on the subject to date.

Growth in the Australian Road System

Released August 2017
This information sheet presents estimates of Kilometres and lane-kilometres of road length for Australian States and Territories back to 1910. It provides the same data for Metropolitan Australia back to 1910, and for individual cities back to 1970.

ARSC2017 

Perth, 10-12 October 2017

The 2017 Australasian Road Safety Conference (ARSC2017) will be held in Perth from Tuesday to Thursday 10-12 October 2017. The Australasian College of Road Safety, Austroads, ARRB and Curtin Monash Accident Research Centre are proud to support the largest road safety-dedicated conference in the Southern Hemisphere.

With a theme “Expanding our horizons”, ARSC2017 will showcase the regions’ outstanding researchers, practitioners, policy-makers and industry spanning the issues identified in the United Nations Decade of Action for Road Safety:

• Road Safety Management
• Infrastructure
• Safe Vehicles
• User Behaviour
• Post-Crash Care.

Upcoming Workshops + Conferences

NEW Austroads Webinar: Prioritising On-Road Public Transport | 26 September 2017, Online

Australasian Road Safety Conference | 10-12 October 2017, Perth, Western Australia

Concrete 2017 | 22-25 October 2017, Adelaide, South Australia

NEW Austroads Webinar: Road Transport Management Framework and Principles | 26 October 2017, Online

ITS World Congress | 29 October-2 November 2017, Montréal, Canada

IRF World Road Meeting | 14-17 November 2017, Delhi, India

NEW Austroads Webinar: Guide to Traffic Management Part 13: Road Safety Environment (2017 Edition) | 16 November 2017, online

ADVI 2nd International Driverless Vehicle Summit | 16-17 November 2017, Adelaide, South Australia

28th Australian Road Research Board (ARRB) International Conference | 29 April - 2 May 2018, Brisbane, Queensland

World Road Association's 8th Symposium on Pavement Surface Characteristics: SURF 2018 | 2-4 May 2018, Brisbane, Queensland

IABMAS 2018 | 9-13 July 2018, Melbourne, Victoria