Austroads: Transport Research and Trends

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 asph...

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 as...

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...

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...

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...

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 Oper...

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 rev...

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 b...

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...

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 Austro...

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...

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 perform...

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, Regi...

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...

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...

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 incorporatin...

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 Mich...

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 an...

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, d...

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 resea...

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...

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 justifyi...

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 ma...

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...

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,...