RoadWatch: Roundup

March 2020

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

Austroads’ response to the Coronavirus pandemic

As the impact of COVID-19 continues to evolve, Austroads is taking precautions to keep our staff and broader community safe and well, while maintaining our essential services to member agencies. We are limiting our travel to business critical domestic journeys and, to ensure staff from member agencies can continue to participate, from the end of the month all Task Force meetings will be held virtually. We have enacted our business continuity plan to ensure our NEVDIS services, which are critical to government and industry, remain accessible.

In the office we are encouraging good hygiene practices and social distancing and have offered staff flexibility to start and finish their days at times that allow then to avoid crowded public transport. This is a rapidly changing situation and senior staff are meeting daily to review our response.

The video below, from the Australian Department of Health, has some simple tips to help stop the spread.

Austroads report reveals effective ways to reduce drink driving and road casualties

Austroads has published a policy and regulatory framework to reduce drink driving and guide the implementation of effective drink driving countermeasures.

Approximately 41% of the Australian population aged 14 years and over drink alcohol at least once a week, including 6% who drink daily, according to the National Centre for Education and Training on Addiction.

Drink driving is involved in about 18% of all road fatalities nationally, resulting in more than 200 deaths a year and thousands of serious injuries.

“As we developed the framework in the report, we consulted with all jurisdictions and learnt about the effective countermeasures they have in place,” says Eric Howard, report co-author.

Using fit-for-purpose materials on roads to sustainably reduce costs and increase durability

Austroads has published two technical reports to guide practitioners in using fit-for-purpose materials for construction and maintenance of sealed and unsealed roads with low to medium traffic volumes.

A fit‑for‑purpose material has properties and performance characteristics which suit a chosen design application. It can be marginal or non-standard and may have been improved through mechanical or chemical stabilisation, or used in an operating condition which is not detrimental to its ongoing performance.

“There’s an increasing shortage of quality quarried materials and natural gravels for road construction and maintenance, with stricter legislation and land access requirements curbing the opening of new quarries and gravel pits,” said Ross Guppy, Austroads Program Manager Assets. “Gravel is also being transported over longer distances, increasing the costs of road construction and maintenance.

A sustainable approach to unlocking heavy vehicle bridge access

Austroads has published a research report to reduce the impacts of heavy vehicles on bridge infrastructure while maintaining freight productivity, in support of reforms proposed by Transport Ministers across Australia in 2018. The Ministers proposed reforming the Australian Performance-Based Standards (PBS) scheme, and the National Transport Commission developed policy documents to support the proposal.

PBS Tier 1 bridge formulae govern the minimum axle spacing, extreme axle spacing and total mass for heavy vehicles to mitigate their impacts on bridge infrastructure. Vehicles that comply with the formulae are Tier 1 PBS vehicles and are permitted to use the bridges.

However, the current bridge formulae can allow for vehicles with greater loads than bridges have been designed for. Many road agencies have identified this issue so assess all applications individually rather than granting automatic access when heavy vehicles comply with the bridge formulae. This approach is necessary but slows down the approval process.

“Austroads commissioned research into options to reduce uncertainty and create faster access decisions, while ensuring safety and productivity outcomes were met,” says Richard Delplace, Austroads Program Manager Network. “The resulting report, Investigation and Development of Bridge Formulae for Inclusion in the Performance-based Standards, focused on ways in which we, in consultation with our member agencies, could review the current PBS Tier 1 bridge formulae, analyse possible PBS vehicle load improvements and review current infrastructure assessment practices.”

Demonstrating a structural reliability framework can accurately assess heavy vehicle access to bridges

Austroads has published a research report demonstrating that a probability-based bridge assessment (PBBA) framework can be used to assess the safety of heavy vehicle freight access to problematic bridges.

Bridge assessments under Australian Standard AS 5100: Bridge Design – Part 7: Bridge Assessment use a deterministic method to assess safe access to bridges, but bridges that fail this assessment are outside its scope, and there is little guidance on such higher-tier assessments.

“With more than 50,000 bridges across Australia and New Zealand, road freight continually increasing and maintenance budgets under pressure, bridge asset agencies have to implement different hierarchical strategies to safely manage heavy vehicle freight access to their bridge networks,” said Ross Guppy, Program Manager Assets. “We wanted to investigate whether agencies could use a PBBA for this purpose.”

“The most holistic framework that provides objective and quantifiable measures of safety on a continuum is a PBBA based on structural reliability theory,” said Colin Caprani, Project Leader.

Helping stakeholders locate content in Guide to Temporary Traffic Management

Austroads has produced a mapping document to help stakeholders locate content from Standards Australia’s revised AS1742.3 (2009): Manual of uniform traffic control devices Traffic control for works on roads.

Some content was transferred to the updated Standard AS1742.3 (2019), while guidance material was incorporated in the Austroads Guide to Temporary Traffic Management (AGTTM) released in December 2019. Some of this material was expanded based on up-to-date input from Austroads member organisations and industry.

“This document, Mapping Comparison: Guide to Temporary Traffic Management and Australian Standard 1742.3 (2009), will save our stakeholders time and frustration by showing them where guidance in the previous version of the Standard was transferred to,” said Richard Delplace, Austroads Program Manager Network.

Upcoming Austroads webinars

Integrating Safe System with Movement and Place for Vulnerable Road Users
26 March, 1.00pm AEDT
This webinar presents guidance on opportunities to integrate Safe System design and operation with the Movement and Place Framework for vulnerable road users, particularly pedestrians and cyclists.

Assessment of Key Road Operator Actions to Support Electric Vehicles
31 March, 1.00pm AEDT
This webinar identifies actions road operators can take to support the transition to electric vehicles (EVs). It also clarifies the role of road operators and other government departments (e.g. energy, environment) in areas affecting EV deployment: policy, infrastructure, regulation and incentives.

An Australian Drink Driving Policy and Regulatory Framework
9 April, 12.00pm AEDT
This webinar provides an overview of a three-year Austroads project that examines alcohol-related road trauma and reports on the differing legislation, penalty and enforcement policies and practices in place across Australian jurisdictions. The webinar also recommends improvements in policy and practice for both the short and long term.

Sustainable Roads Through Fit-for-purpose Use of Available Materials
15 April, 1.00pm AEDT
This webinar provides a holistic understanding of the key components which influence fit-for-purpose material selection for regional and rural roads with low to medium traffic volumes. The webinar covers both sealed and unsealed roads.

Investigation and Development of Bridge Formulae for Inclusion in the Performance-based Standards
29 April, 1.00pm AEDT
This webinar discusses the merits of three options to advance the future of PBS access in Australia as it relates to bridges. These options are analysed in the context of key objectives endorsed by ministers to improve PBS access outcomes.

Bridge Assessment Beyond the AS5100 Deterministic Methodology
30 April, 1.00pm AEDT
This webinar provides an overview of ways to assess the safety of existing bridges beyond the Rating Factor approach of AS5100. A recent Austroads project developed a framework based on structural reliability theory that can be used for the Australasian context.

Latest webinar recordings

Local Government Road Safety Management Guidance
This webinar, presented on 27 February 2019, provides an overview of Austroads' guidance on contemporary best practice methods for developing and implementing road safety management frameworks for local government.

Managing Sealed and Unsealed Local Roads
This webinar, presented on 17 February 2020, 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.

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

World Road Association updates

Austroads 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.

TC 1.1 Performance of Transport Administrations
Please find attached WRA report submitted by Alan Colegate who attended the above meeting in Paris, France in February 2020.

TC 1.4 Climate Change and Resilience of Road Network
Please find attached WRA report submitted by Louis Bettini who attended the above meeting in Paris, France in February 2020.

TC 4.2 Road Network Operations and ITS
Please find attached WRA report submitted by Dr Clarissa Han and Matthew Hall who attended the above meeting in Paris, France in January 2020.

TC 3.1 Road Safety
Please find attached WRA report submitted by Stephanie Davy who attended the above meeting in Paris, France in January 2020.

TC 3.3 Asset Management
Please find attached WRA report submitted by Ulysses Ai who attended the above meeting in Paris, France in January 2020.

TC 4.1 Pavements
Please find attached WRA report submitted by Dr Didier Bodin who attended the above meeting in Paris, France in February 2020.

TC 4.4 Tunnels
Please find attached WRA report submitted by George Mavroyeni who attended the above meeting in Paris, France in February 2020.

Other recent research

BITRE: Road deaths Australia - monthly bulletins

This monthly bulletin contains current counts and summaries of road crash deaths and fatal road crashes in Australia. It is 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.

Upcoming conferences

Conference organisers are carefully reviewing their arrangements to mitigate the spread of COVID-19. Please be aware that details may change at short notice.

Safer Roads 2020, Virginia, USA, 12-14 May 2020

Transport for NSW's Biennial Pavements Conference, Sydney, 27 May 2020

ITS Asia Pacific Forum, Brisbane, 25-28 May 2020

NEW Australian Pavement Recycling and Stabilisation Conference, Sydney, 29 July 2020

AITPM National Traffic and Transport Conference, Brisbane, 28-31 July 2020

IABSE Congress, Christchurch, 2-4 September 2020

2020 Australasian Road Safety Conference, Melbourne, 16-18 September 2020

Australasian Tunnelling Conference, Melbourne, 29 November-3 December, 2020.

Austroads Bridge Conference, Adelaide, 11-14 May 2021