The Victorian Government’s Road Safety Strategy 2021-2030 aims to halve deaths by 2030, and put us on the path to achieving Vision Zero (no deaths) on Victorian roads by 2050. The strategy highlights that safer travel speed and infrastructure improvements are critical in achieving these targets.
But without an up-to-date understanding of infrastructure risk across the Victorian road network, it is difficult to target investment in the right places and ensure funding is directed where it will have an impact in saving lives and reducing serious injuries.
The Department of Transport and Planning, formerly VicRoads and Department of Transport, last assessed road safety risk across their network in 2014 using the AusRAP and ANRAM models.
There has been a significant investment in safety improvement works completed across the network since 2014, but the AusRAP Star Ratings have not been updated to reflect these changes.
In January this year, DTP issued a competitive tender to collect and code the data needed to provide an update of the Star Ratings assessments for all road users. After review of the proposals, the contract was awarded to NTRO, Australia’s National Transport Research Organisation.
“We are very pleased to be delivering this project for DTP, as it will be an important part of saving lives on Victoria’s roads,” said Emily McLean, Leader Infrastructure Safety Management at NTRO.
“The project involves coding and analysis of over 25,000km of State roads, making this the largest AusRAP project in recent years.
“The project officially kicked off four months ago, and NTRO have already coded thousands of kilometres of roads prioritised by DTP.”
Head of Road Safety Victoria, Marcelo Vidales, said: “We know how important the collection of data is to plan, deliver and evaluate road safety projects and initiatives that drive down road trauma and save lives.
“Having access to the best available data and information is vital in getting a strong picture of the state of our roads and identify any areas in need of improvement.”
McLean said: “This project will provide DTP with crucial data about their road infrastructure helping to identify areas of high risk and allowing the Department to prioritise investment where it will have the most impact in reducing fatal and serious injury crashes. It’s exciting to be working on a network-wide project in my home state that will help support Victoria to achieve Vision Zero.”
NTRO, formerly the Australian Road Research Board (ARRB), has for over 60 years undertaken road research and provided the nation’s road managers with expert advice for making roads safer and last longer.
“We do this by challenging, testing, innovating and applying world’s best practice in road safety,” said McLean.
NTRO is one of nine Centres of Excellence managed by iRAP, a UK registered charity which manages the iRAP model at the core of AusRAP. NTRO have staff accredited by iRAP and is a member of the charity’s Global Technical Advisory Committee, helping ensure the latest global road safety research informs the iRAP model applied in over 100 countries around the world.
NTRO is also a member of the Austroads infrastructure risk assessment steering and technical committees.
NTRO’s National Leader for Transport Safety, David McTiernan, stated: “NTRO provides an end-to-end solution for road safety risk assessments starting with the collecting of the road survey, providing the detailed coding, analysis, mapping and reporting of road safety risk posed to road users by the road infrastructure.”
“And our team of expert road engineers will also work with a client’s road managers to development road safety improvement programs that best target the highest risk issues and predict the impact of these in reducing road trauma.”
NTRO is currently applying AusRAP and ANRAM infrastructure risk assessments to help the following transport agencies and local governments understand the risk across their network:
- Department of Infrastructure, SA
- Transport for NSW, NSW
- Department of Infrastructure, Planning and Logistics, NT
- Launceston Council, TAS
- Sri Lanka
We have recently completed assessments for Bundaberg and Sunshine Coast in Queensland.
Find out more about NTRO's road safety capabilities here.