Road Design
Fundamental Objectives of Road Design
- Publication no: AP-R548-17
- ISBN: 978-1-925671-04-9
- Published: 22 August 2017
- PDF (free) Download
This report identifies improvements to guidance, education and practice to ensure the fundamental objectives of road design are achieved in new and existing road projects.
The report provides a foundational road design definition and a series of road design principles that it recommends be incorporated into the Austroads Guide to Road Design.
While the project concluded that the design guidance in Australia is technically sound, it recommended:
- better educating designers and practitioners on the importance of road design objectives and how to achieve them
- improving design development and evaluation guidance to enable designers to apply robust engineering judgment, value engineering, Safe System principles, and assess whle-of-life costs
- providing evaluation tools to encourage the development and evaluation of multiple design solutions
- adapting existing design practices including requiring practitioners to demonstrate how design solutions achieve the objectives of road design.
- Summary
- 1. Introduction
- 1.1. Background
- 1.2. Objectives
- 1.3. Method
- 1.3.1. Fundamental Objectives of Road Design
- 2. Literature Review
- 2.1. Austroads Guides
- 2.2. Australian and New Zealand Design Guidance
- 2.2.1. Design Options and Cost Benefit Analysis, Austroads Guides
- 2.2.2. Design Considerations, AGRD Part 2
- 2.2.3. Process and Documentation, Austroads Guide to Road Design Part 8
- 2.2.4. Safety through Design, Other Austroads Guides
- 2.3. Jurisdiction Design Guidance
- 2.3.1. Design Exceptions
- 2.4. International Design Guidance
- 2.4.1. Preliminary Design and Option Development
- 2.4.2. Design Philosophy and Policies
- 2.4.3. Other Design Criteria
- 2.4.4. European Guidelines on Process, Safety and Environmental Considerations
- 2.4.5. Cost Benefit Analysis
- 2.4.6. Value Engineering
- 2.5. Research Papers and Technical Reports
- 2.5.1. Multi-discipline Network-wide Design Approach
- 2.5.2. Safety in Geometric Design Standards
- 2.5.3. Safety Risk and Design Parameters
- 2.5.4. Philosophies Guiding Trade-off Decisions
- 2.5.5. Practical Design
- 2.6. Analysis Tools
- 2.7. Literature Review Summary
- 3. Stakeholder Engagement
- 3.1. Workshop and Questionnaire
- 3.1.1. Summary of Responses
- 4. Design Guidance and Practice Shortfalls
- 4.1. Issues and Restrictions
- 4.1.1. Quick Delivery at a Low Cost
- 4.1.2. Design Contract
- 4.1.3. Design Guidance, Value Engineering, WOLC and Objectives of Road Design
- 4.1.4. Design Competency
- 4.1.5. Misuse or Misunderstanding of Design Exceptions
- 4.2. Identified Road Design Practice Challenges
- 5. Interim Guidance
- 5.1. Further Adoption of Existing Design Approaches
- 5.1.1. Network-wide Evaluation
- 5.1.2. Collaborative Concept Designs
- 5.1.3. Effective Use of Lower Design Domain
- 5.2. Increase Competency, Provide Guidance and Tools
- 5.3. Provide a Definition of Road Design and Road Design Principles
- 5.3.1. Developing a Definition of Road Design
- 5.3.2. Principles of Road Design for Australia and New Zealand
- 5.4. Using Guidance that is not Published in Austroads or Road Agency Guides
- 5.4.1. Innovation and Emerging Treatments
- 6. Conclusion and Recommendations
- 6.1. Conclusion
- 6.2. Recommendations
- References
- Appendix A Workshops and Consultations
- A.1 Questionnaire Respondents
- A.2 Questionnaire
- A.2.1 General Comments on How the Purpose and Scope/Issue is Relevant in Your Jurisdiction
- A.2.2 General Comments on How the Purpose and Scope/Issue is Relevant in Your Jurisdiction
- A.2.3 Literature Review
- A.2.4 Next steps/Project direction
- A.3 Responses to Questionnaire
- A.3.1 General Comments on How the Purpose and Scope/issue of this Austroads Report is Relevant in Your Jurisdiction
- A.3.2 Literature Review Feedback
- Appendix B Issues, Restrictions, Challenges, Proposed Approaches
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