The Austroads Guide to Road Design is intended to provide designers with a framework that promotes efficiency in design and construction, economy, and both consistency and safety for road users.
The guide moves away from rigid design limits as the basis for achieving these goals, and promotes the concept of ‘context-sensitive design’.
The intention is to allow designers the flexibility to exercise their critical, engineering judgement, for example, by choosing design values outside of normally accepted limits when prevailing constraints require, provided that they recognise their responsibility to be able to produce strong, defensible evidence in support of that judgement.
The Guide to Road Design comprises:
- Part 1: Objectives of Road Design
- Part 2: Network Wide Design (under development)
- Part 3: Geometric Design
- Part 4: Intersections and Crossings - General
- Part 4A: Unsignalised and Signalised Intersections
- Part 4B: Roundabouts
- Part 4C: Interchanges
- Part 5: Drainage – General and Hydrology Considerations
- Part 5A: Drainage – Road Surface, Networks, Basins and Subsurface
- Part 5B: Drainage – Open Channels, Culverts and Floodway Crossings
- Part 6: Roadside Design, Safety and Barriers
- Part 6A: Paths for Walking and Cycling
- Part 6B: Roadside Environment
- Part 7: New and Emerging Treatments
The content of Part 2: Design Considerations and Part 8: Process and Documentation were incorporated into Part 1: Objectives of Road Design in March 2021.