REDEFINING JOURNEY
RELIABILITY
ACCESSIBILITY, TECHNOLOGY, USER COMFORT AND SAFETY WERE THE BIG ISSUES OF THE DAY AT THE REDEFINING JOURNEY RELIABILITY SEMINAR AT THE ROADS AUSTRALIAN TRANSPORT SUMMIT 2019 HELD IN SYDNEY AT THE END OF MAY.
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wo leading questions at the Redefining Journey Reliability seminar at the Roads Australian Transport Summit 2019 were: has journey reliability improved over the past few years? And what are some of issues that will arise over the next decade when it comes to congestion of roads? Seminar panellist Ian Christensen is the managing director of iMOVE, a not-forprofit company that is co-funded by the government and industry. Its brief is to marry various organisations and businesses together to take specific actions that will improve the movement of people and freight. He says that when you measure transport and roading reliability, the only thing that matters is people’s perception of how long their journey will take. “I know we have some of the best road designers and builders at this conference, but the thing is people don’t really care how beautiful or how well built a road is – they just want to get to work on time,” says Mr. Christensen. He says that most road authorities realise it is not just about the volume of traffic or average speed that matters, it is elements of the journey that are important. He says that people are not using the roads because they like driving, they are using the road for one purpose only – to get from A to B. “We need to measure the road’s contribution to meeting that purpose,” he says. “To that end, all road authorities are making measures of reliability and some are quite advanced. Perth is one example. I know they measure the reliability of all the road links in the Perth metropolitan area. They have been doing that on a continuous basis and have been recording it quarterly since about 2014. On nearly every segment of those road links bar two, 48
ROADS JULY 2019
they’ve shown a marked improvement in journey reliability.” However, he says that if a commuter is trying to get into Sydney via George Street, or trying to get through Melbourne’s CBD, then there are some serious challenges to journey reliability. “We are lacking visibility in some areas because we can’t improve it until we measure it,” he says. “I’m not sure if we are measuring from the point of view of the person doing the travelling. I think we measure it in the simplest way we can measure it because we can count a car here or there. That’s not necessarily what helps make journeys more reliable.” Soren Tellegen is the executive vice president Asia Pacific of Kapsch TrafficCom, a company that specialises in finding sustainable solutions for transportation in both the private and public sector. Mr.
Tellegen says that he thinks there is one area where governments can help with infrastructure and roading and that is to make all the data it collects publicly available. This would help councils, road authorities and other stakeholders make informed decisions about population growth in particular areas, he says. This in turn would make it easier to decide where new railways, roads and other transport infrastructure should be integrated into the communities they serve. Mr. Christensen said data could also serve a real time purpose for road users. This would include knowing things like what the traffic on a particular route is going to be like the following day based on historical data. Is it due to rain that day? What are some of the weather outcomes that might affect the journey? What if there were alternative routes that might be available?
