Austroads and the National Transport Commission have released the updated medical standards for assessing private and commercial vehicle drivers’ fitness to drive safely. Assessing Fitness to Drive contains medical standards to provide guidance to health professionals and driver licensing bodies on the health assessment of private and commercial drivers of heavy vehicles, light vehicles and motorbikes.
Assessing Fitness to Drive can be downloaded in electronic format for free or a hard copy can be purchased for a nominal fee on theAustroads websitealong with additional supporting information.
New Austroads Strategic Plan
At its March meeting the Austroads Board finalised the Austroads Strategic Plan 2012-16 and gave preliminary approval to the work program for the next two financial years. The new Strategic Plan will come into operation in July. From that time the current Austroads task forces and review panels will all be named task forces and common terms of reference will apply. The Capability task force will become a working group with specific terms of reference approved by the Board. Other working groups may be established at the discretion of the relevant program manager.
The current programs will continue but rotate between member organisations at the end of 2012-13 to promote the development of knowledge gained of national issues across member organisations. The intent is to have ownership of issues and Austroads work by all members. It is proposed that the allocation of programs to member organisations and the appointment of new program managers be determined in March 2013. The incoming program managers will then work on a handover with the outgoing program managers. The incoming program managers will take over full responsibility for their program from 1 July 2013 and continue until 30 June 2017.
New Program Managers
There has been a change in Austroads program managers. Bruce Gidley, Chief Operating Officer, VicRoads has replaced Nial Finegan as Freight program manager. Steve Brown, Executive Director, Regional Services, VicRoads has replacedDuncan Elliot as Network program manager.
Austroads Local Government Partnership Agreement
A new local government agreement between Austroads, ALGA and IPWEA has been approved to replace the current agreement which is due to expire in June. The agreement recognises the importance of local government in the overall transport network. It defines the roles of each organisation and how they will work together to achieve mutual objectives.
Recognition of Austroads as the WRA national committee for Australia and New Zealand
Currently there is a separate Australian and New Zealand National Committee of the World Road Association (WRA). The secretariat for this group is provided by Austroads. The WRA criteria for national committees were changed in 2011 to allow an existing organisation to be recognised as the national committee for WRA by way of a memorandum of understanding between the organisation and WRA. Austroads and the WRA have agreed on a memorandum of understanding to have WRA recognise Austroads as the national committee for Australia and New Zealand.
Local Government Reminder
All local government organisations can access all Austroads publications electronically for free. This includes the guide publications. For further information please email
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. This is only available for electronic copies, hard copy publications still need to be purchased.
Accessing Austroads publications
Austroads technical and research reports are available free as PDFs from the Austroads website www.austroads.com.au. Please sign up forRoadWatchto be alerted of all Austroads publications as they become available.
Part 5 of the Guide to Bridge Technology – Structural Drafting supersedes the previous Part 5 of the guide which was released in 2009. It includes a number of editorial changes, as well as technical changes in a number of tables and sections. Itsets out the principles involved in the presentation of bridge structural drawings and gives engineers and draft persons a concise guide in drafting presentation and information.
It covers a range of areas within bridge structural drafting based on drafting principles such as line work, text and dimensions, scales, definitions, drawing orders and numbering, use of abbreviations and symbols, and concrete and reinforcement detailing.
This report provides background information on analog and digital communication and a review on the wide area network (WAN) and local area network (LAN) technologies currently used by road agencies. The report details the future of WAN/LAN technologies including their use within the new National Broadband Network (NBN) infrastructure that will provide increased connectivity through more bandwidth and faster communication speed.
With the implementation of the NBN fibre network, road agencies are faced with a possible change in operations away from the technologies currently being employed. These technologies include Dial IP, ADSL and similar technologies for traffic signals and ITS needs. This project represents an initial step in a journey to address these upcoming issues. It has a focus on traffic signal communication but the general principles in the report should be applicable to the broader LAN/WAN communication of ITS related equipment and services. Specific issues related to the broader LAN/WAN communication not addressed in this report can be investigated further as the journey progresses.
Congestion in Australian cities needs to be continually managed as significant increases in population and new car registrations grow. Area traffic control (ATC) systems such as SCATS or STREAMS are important tools to manage congestion on arterial roads. At present, ATC systems in Australia and New Zealand employ mostly information from one set of detectors on a road link for signal operations. These detectors are either at about 1.5 m in advance of the stopline (such as those in SCATS) or at about 35 m in advance of the stopline (such as those in STREAMS). Both systems essentially use detectors near the stopline, and both do not generally employ detectors at the upstream end of a road link.
This project deals with how the variability of traffic flow measured by link detectors in congested conditions impacts on the operation of traffic signals and investigates how detector data from upstream and downstream of congested sites could be used to improve route and/or network operations.
Microsimulation traffic modelling (MSTM) is a useful tool for controlled comparative studies for on-road public transport (ORPT) priority treatments. This report explains a more consistent approach to the application of MSTM to ORPT. It also better explains ORPT priority schemes by controlled comparative studies using MSTM.
The study developed an MSTM study framework by conducting a study of an ORPT priority scheme to confirm if modelling is necessary; and if so, which modelling technique is most appropriate.
This study looked into four ORPT priority treatments including: full bus lane, set back bus lane, queue jump bus lane and no priority. Microsimulation experiments were conducted using a hypothetical linear network to examine the relative performance of the selected ORPT treatments and extract principles in OPRT priority applications.
This report details the development of a preliminary set of load-wear-cost (LWC) relationships as a basis for estimating the short-run marginal road wear cost and long-run marginal road wear cost for the main road types comprising Australia’s sealed road network.
The LWC relationships resulting from a 50 year pavement life-cycle analysis were developed for each road and pavement type and the six axle groups expressed in terms of equivalent annual uniform costs (EAUC) of maintenance and rehabilitation works versus axle group load (tonne-km) and also expressed in terms of EAUC versus standard axle repetitions (SAR-km).
Generally the estimates of long-run marginal road wear cost increase as the traffic on the road type decreases. This reflects the fact that road types with high levels of traffic are built to withstand and endure higher loads better than the road types with lower levels of traffic.
This report outlines national best practice for the planning, design and implementation of temporary traffic control measures at road work sites. Information in this report is generally in accordance with AS1742.3:2009 and references other national, state and territory guides and codes of practice. Information in the areas of risk management, compliance safety inspections, road safety auditing and practical field operation techniques is covered, providing a national uniform approach to these aspects of temporary traffic control schemes.
Road work sites are a challenging work environment, particularly when they must compete with road users for often limited space and restricted site access. Applying the principles presented in this report will assist to ensure that safety is a priority and that any areas of potential harm can be quickly identified and remedied before an incident arises.
Austroads developed this report to prepare national best practice training and accreditation that can be undertaken by industry personnel. The training and accreditation framework provides recognition of prior learning gained interstate and permit transportability of the accreditation across Australian jurisdictions. Currently each jurisdiction has a different requirement for the training and accreditation of personnel involved in the design and development of traffic management plans and traffic control plans. For industry, this results in additional training and accreditation costs for personnel who may be required to work in multiple jurisdictions.
This report proposes a framework of six functional roles with skill sets for each role that can be adopted by Australian jurisdictions to provide the core skills required to control traffic at roadwork sites. It acknowledges that differences do exist and will remain between the states and territories in some specific areas of legislation and practice.
The overall objective of this project was to determine the most appropriate road network classification for heavy vehicle cost allocation and pricing. This report looks to improves the current approach to cost allocation, develop incremental pricing; and develop direct user charging.
The methodology for determining the most appropriate road network classification involved obtaining road use and expenditure data from road agencies. This data was analysed using statistical regressions on historic expenditure and road use to determine the share of road use. The datasets were then split into different road types space
and the analysis was performed again to investigate how the attributable share differs between different road types. The results were then interpreted and conclusions on the most appropriate road network classification were drawn.
Overall, the statistical analysis demonstrated that the relationship between road use and expenditure does not provide a strong basis for determining the most appropriate road network classification unless the data collection process can be improved.
Austroads Publication feedback:
If you would like to provide feedback on any Austroads publications you can do this by clicking
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Mapping previous Austroads publications to the new:
There is a number of our previous publications which have been superseded, including the Guide to Traffic Engineering Practice series. If you want to find the current equivalent we have developed a table that allows you to cross reference the previous publications with the new publication that replaces it. Please click hereor visit the Austroads website.
Comprehensive Austroads Publications List:
A complete and regularly updated publications list is provided by Austroads. This contains all the guides, as well as all the free publications that are available for purchase or download through the website. All prices are listed as well as dates of when publications were released so you can keep up to date with the latest. Please click here to view the Austroads publications list.
2012 Australasian College of Road Safety National Conference - Registration Now Open
The 2012 Australasian College of Road Safety national conference will be held at The Menzies Sydney Hotel on 9 and 10 August. The conference aims to take road safety to the next level of knowledge and implementation and to assist in the translation of research into action in keeping with the Safe System and Decade of Action for Road Safety. The conference allows for direct interaction with presenters and is an important opportunity to network with senior practitioners and those with policy responsibilities in Australasia.
More information can be found here, while registration information, including the online registration form for the event can be found here.
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