Collaboration and data

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.

Two 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, 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?

“How do we build into that process a warning of what the risk is of you running into a traffic jam on the journey you are about to take that day?” he says. “If the system can predict to you that the risk is about five per cent, then you might be happy with the predicted outcome. But if it tells you that you have about an 80 per cent risk of running into a traffic jam of unknown duration, then you might say to yourself, ‘Remember that deal that Vic Roads was offering for guaranteed journey times? It might be worth paying the price today for a shorter journey.’

“Now, some people are asking themselves, ‘Hold on, what is this guaranteed journey trip?’ It doesn’t exist yet, but there might be a commercial opportunity around it. Could we treat roads as a service? How would we treat roads as a service? If we are going to treat roads as a service, what is the universal access obligation to users? It’s not so much a technology solution as much as a business and social construct solution. It’s taking a different approach to this road asset we have in a road network and overlaying some management processes to allow for better outcomes for people.”

Tellegen states that he thinks there are a lot of great technologies out in the ether that would help the roading and infrastructure industries. However, the issue was not the amount of technologies available – there are plenty of new ones being rolled out all the time – but the recalcitrance of companies, governments

State and local governments need to embrace new technologies that will help lessen congestion on Australian roads.

and people wanting to take them up, or taking their time in utilising them.

“It’s very easy to talk about a technology solution where you wake up in the morning and you have a series of travel options. For example, there might be an option that says I can take a shared bike to a tram station, then take the tram for a couple of kilometres and then take an Uber the last kilometre, which means I get to my destination 20 minutes earlier than would in my private car. I think we are a long way from that,” he says. “However, with guaranteed journey times there are solutions that can help road asset managers create innovative ways of dealing with the road space that we do have to share.

“For example, in the US they have pod lanes, where they actually build expansions to existing road infrastructure and they charge money just for the extension. So the existing road they leave free – anyone can use it – and people can make decisions throughout the day in real time about using the extension. They use a pricing mechanism to manage the demand on those lanes.”

Tellegen says that journey reliability is a different thing, as this doesn’t really encompass getting faster to a destination. He thinks people want reliability and predictability so their frustration gets reduced.

“I saw something in Thailand recently, and I wonder why we don’t have them here,” he says. “They have count down timers on their traffic lights. It’s very basic technology but if you think of the amount of frustration that would diminish, then you wonder why we don’t do it. It gives people something to focus on. Simple things like that can be effective uses of technology.

However, caution is still needed with some technologies when it comes to new projects and how the community sees these new pieces of technology – the use of artificial intelligence, for instance. This is the view of Priya SaratChandran from Futureye, a company that helps companies navigate through emerging technological issues within a variety of industries.

“Microsoft Australia commissioned us to look into how people perceive AI within communities,” she says. “They don’t do that unless they see the value of getting that sort of input to lay a foundation so that AI can thrive and be innovative while being socially acceptable at the same time.”

Tellegen mildly disagrees about the level of community involvement required when it comes to new technologies.

“If Henry Ford had gone to the community to ask for their advice when it came to transport, they would have asked for faster horses,” he says. “You need to have a helicopter view of what needs are being met. There needs to be some separation.”

Christensen says that a good example of where government is doing well with informing the community is Transport for NSW. For the past few years, the state body has been good at keeping the public up to date with what is happening in real time on the transport channels within the state, he says.

“That was in response to the travelling public wanting to know what was happening real time,” says Mr. Christensen. “They didn’t want to know what was on the timetable – they wanted to know the real time a bus was going to arrive.”

And it hasn’t always been that way, he says. He believes that most states got lulled into a lack of investment in infrastructure, which, combined with a population increase, is now starting to cause strain on certain transport networks.

“They are really scrambling to match supply and demand,” he says. “I think there is some concern that even with the billions of dollars being spent on capacity expansion right now, in the end that will not be sufficient to level out the supply and demand. This includes the supply of road space and the supply of movement opportunities. In the end, my expectation is that we are seeing more contemplation of demand and management of supply. We can increase the supply, but if that is not going to be sufficient to satisfy the surging demand, then we are going to have to start looking at demand management, too.”

Tellegen believes the country is already at that stage.

“We have to do demand management now. That is where technology comes into play,” Mr. Tellegen says. “The government has to pull those levers itself, or at least influence those levers.”

“We have to design a demand management system that is socially acceptable,” says Mr. Christensen, “which doesn’t negatively impact access to the network but that encourages behaviour change around the times that people travel and the modes that they use. We have to support the range of alternatives with better information systems so that we do have some levers to pull on in the demand management space.”

CONTRACTS -- IN BRIEF

ROADS & INFRASTRUCTURE MAGAZINE PROVIDES AN UPDATE ON SOME OF THE MAJOR PROJECT CONTRACTS AND TENDERS RECENTLY AWARDED AND OUT TO MARKET ACROSS THE AUSTRALASIAN INFRASTRUCTURE SECTOR.

NORTHERN TERRITORY $26M contract awarded The Northern Territory Government has awarded a $26 million Litchfield Park Road construction contract to local company Ostojic Group. The company will bituminise the Litchfield Park Road Loop and undertake 12 kilometre’s of upgrade and sealing works. Construction will involve the installation of a new bridge over the Finniss River and a sealed two-lane, two-way rural arterial road with a speed limit of up to 100 kilometres an hour.

NEW SOUTH WALES Sydney Metro awards $26M upgrade contract Sydney Metro has awarded a $26 million contract to help deliver the upgrade of the T3 Bankstown line. Metron T2M, a joint venture between Arcadis Australia Pacific and Mott Mac Donald Australia, have been awarded the contract. The pair will deliver design services for the stations and the railway corridor between Marrickville and Punchbowl.

QUEENSLAND Cross River Rail contractor to deliver accessibility upgrades Six stations on Brisbane’s southside will receive upgrades to coincide with the $5.4 billion Cross River Rail project. The accessibility upgrades to existing platforms will be delivered by the current contractors for the Cross River Rail project, the PULSE consortium and the UNITY alliance. The upgrades come as part of a $57 million boost to Queensland’s existing $300 million accessibility upgrade program.

TASMANIA Tenders open for 2.5M Great Eastern Drive upgrades The Tasmanian Government has allocated a further $2.5 million for stage two of the Great Eastern Drive upgrade. The tender, which includes safety upgrades to the Coles Bay junction, as well as installing dedicated right turn lanes at Basin Creek and Flagstaff Road, is now open. VICTORIA Designer appointed for $15.8M Bendigo Station upgrade The Victorian Government has appointed a local company, e+ architecture to re-design the iconic Bendigo Station building. The refresh comes as part of the $15.8 million Bendigo and Eaglehawk Station upgrades.

WESTERN AUSTRALIA Main Roads WA awards $24M upgrade contract Main Roads Western Australia has awarded the $24 million design and construction contract to upgrade the Roe Highway and Karel Avenue interchange. Georgiou Group has won the contract, which also includes widening the Karel Avenue bridge. The works, according to Main Roads WA, will support the construction of the Thornlie-Cockburn Link by extending the Karel Avenue bridge across the freight railway line located immediately south of Roe Highway.

Contractor starts final works on $77.5M project in WA The upgrades to Perth’s remaining section of Reid Highway have begun. Contractor Decmil will make modifications to the intersection of Reid Highway and West Swan Road among other upgrades. Decmil’s contract will be the first delivered under the WA Industry Participation Strategy ensuring local work and job creation.

INTERNATIONAL Major contract won for Auckland International Airport works Auckland Airport has chosen its preferred proponent to deliver the international taxiway and remote stands project. This will be a critical component in the airport’s major capital works program. CIMIC Group company, CPB Contractors, has won the airport contract.

Contract awarded for $60M New Zealand interchange A $56 million rail and bus interchange will be built at Puhinui in Auckland, New Zealand, to connect transport to the airport and South Auckland. The Early Contractor Involvement (ECI) contract has been awarded to joint venture McConnell Dowell and Built Environs.