RoadWatch: Roundup

May 2019

Welcome to our monthly Austroads RoadWatch: Roundup for May. Discover our latest news, published reports, Guide updates, webinars and events.

Geotechnical investigation and design guidance updated

Austroads has released an update of Guide to Road Design Part 2: Design Considerations with a new extensive section on geotechnical investigation and design.

Guide to Road Design Part 2 provides a detailed description of design objectives, context-sensitive design, and factors that influence road design such as Safe System philosophy.

The new appendix describes the importance of geotechnical investigations and the way road design outcomes are influenced by site conditions, associated ground response, geological hazards and locally available material.

Easy access to Austroads Guides

Guide users can now access all Parts from a set on a single page in either PDF or online format.

Access the pages with the links below. If you have a website account, you can bookmark these pages for easy access from your profile page.

Guide to Asset Management

Guide to Bridge Technology

Guide to Pavement Technology

Guide to Project Delivery

Guide to Road Design

Guide to Road Safety

Guide to Road Tunnels

Guide to Traffic Management

Guide to Traffic Management Part 6 updated with Safe System content

Austroads has released an updated edition of Guide to Traffic Management Part 6: Intersections, Interchanges and Crossings following a Safe System review.

The updated edition includes new Safe System content in chapters 2, 3, 6 and 8 including detailed guidance on implementing the Safe System Assessment Framework.

The Guide to Traffic Management has 13 Parts and provides comprehensive guidance for Australian and New Zealand practitioners involved in traffic engineering, road design and road safety.

In January, Austroads released the report Embedding Safe System in the Guide to Traffic Management. The new and revised content recommended in this report has now been completely incorporated into the Guide series.

Download the Guide

Mobility as a Service (MaaS) update

The concept of Mobility as a Service (MaaS) is of increasing interest to transport providers and members of the public.

It is envisaged that MaaS will allow a person to plan, book and pay for their travel using a single app that would then guide them on their journey. MaaS will allow users to choose between all transport modes and prioritise options for their journey such as cost, directness, ease, time and other factors deemed important by the individual.

Austroads is investigating MaaS as part of its congestion management project. The project has six modules of work. The MaaS module report, which examines the risks and opportunities for Australia and New Zealand's public sector, is expected to be published by mid-year.

The South Australian Department of Planning, Transport and Infrastructure library has also recently produced a collection of MaaS information resources distributed via Tranzinfo.

Upcoming Austroads webinars

Lean Construction: Responding to the Productivity Challenge Faced by the Construction Industry 16 May 2019, 1pm AEST

No charge but registration is essential.

Can’t make the live session? Register and we’ll send you a link to the recording.

Latest webinar recordings

Updated Guidance for the Design of New Pavements for Road Tunnels
This webinar, presented on 30 April 2019, gives an overview of the key changes to Guide to Road Tunnels Part 2: Planning, Design and Commissioning.

Guide to Pavement Technology Part 4D: Stabilised Materials
This webinar, presented on 11 April 2019, gives as overview of the key changes to the Guide and the significant advances in the areas of stabilisation or road pavements.

A National Approach to Measuring Non-fatal Crash Outcomes
This webinar, presented on 4 April 2019, gives an overview of an Austroads pilot project to improve the measurement and reporting of serious injury crashes.

Road Risk Assessment, Case Studies and Engagement Guidance for Speed Management
This webinar, presented on 26 March 2019, 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.

View all our past webinars online www.austroads.com.au/webinars.

World Road Association updates

Austroads currently has full or corresponding representatives on 15 World Road Association technical committees. Representatives are members of, or have a close working relationship with, an Austroads Task Force or working group.

Road Network Operations/Intelligent Transportation Systems

The Road Network Operations/Intelligent Transportation Systems Technical Committee met in Melbourne in April.

The committee has recently finalised the report, Low-Cost Intelligent Transport Systems.

Read the meeting report by Ian Espada, Austroads’ representative on the committee for a run down on the meeting outcomes.

Road Design and Infrastructure for Innovative Transport Solutions

This task force, which is investigating the challenges and opportunities for road managers presented by automated vehicles, met in Melbourne in April.

We were pleased to note that the Austrian task force member reported at the meeting that Austroads' connected and automated vehicle publications are recognised overseas as being of very high quality and of great technical standard.

To find out more about the work program and meeting outputs, read the meeting report by Matthew Hall, Austroads' representative on the task force .

Others' recent research

BITRE: Road deaths Australia—monthly bulletins

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.

Download the April 2019 report

BITRE: Hospitalised injury

This statistical report provides summary traffic hospitalised injury series. These series are produced by the National Injury Surveillance Unit at Flinders University under an agreement with the Australian Institute of Health and Welfare.

Download the series

ITF: High Capacity Transport: Towards Efficient, Safe and Sustainable Road Freight

This report, published by the international Transport Forum, explores the impacts that higher capacity vehicles have on road freight transport markets, modal shift, infrastructure and safety. It investigates how appropriate regulation and ITS measures could be applied to relax weight and dimension restrictions and allow these vehicles to be used in specific geographical areas or on specific routes.

Download the report