Austroads: Transport Research and Trends Austroads

For decades, Austroads Guide to Road Design (AGRD) has served as a critical resource for practitioners involved in road planning, design and engineering. Austroads recently completed a strategic review of road design guidance, identifying strategies to sustainably maintain the AGRD as the pre-eminent road design guide in Australia and New Zealand.
Through an online survey and face-to-face interviews, the project team identified opinions and possible strategic actions from users of the AGRD, stakeholders in road design practice and international experts. This webinar describes what the review learned, and the nature of actions proposed to realise identified opportunities.
Webinar presenters, Andrew Somers and Dr Rod Troutbeck, report on the findings of the engagement with the AGRD’s users and non-users. Provided feedback identified that road design must be context-sensitive and Austroads’ road design guidance needs to cover the range of contexts and the application of judgement is a critical part of context-sensitive designs and solutions.
The presenters also explore how changes to structure and content might allow the AGRD to:
better cover urban environments
integrate guidance for planning and design
more effectively promote context-sensitive design practices
establish clearer links to supporting evidence.

The Department of Transport Western Australia has been working with Western Australian local governments to develop, trial and evaluate ‘safe active streets’ to encourage more people to walk, wheel and ride in their communities.
The pilot program trialled and adapted common local area traffic management treatments to create 30 km/h environments with unique designs created that reflect local community needs and context.
This webinar explores the origins of the program, how and why it started, it will share high-level insights from the evaluation, including what worked, what didn’t and what was learnt along the way. It also shares ‘where to next’ for the program and how this work will be used to inform guidelines to support the delivery of safe active street infrastructure by local government into the future.
The webinar is presented by Caroline Elliott and Helen Ginbey, moderated by Sam Bolton.
This webinar is part of the Cycling and Walking Australia and New Zealand (CWANZ) webinar series. CWANZ is the Australasian lead reference group for walking and bike riding on transport and recreation networks. For further information please visit www.cwanz.com.au

Moisture damage in asphalt (also known as stripping) can significantly reduce the durability and strength of asphalt pavements, often resulting in expensive repairs. Hydrated lime is widely used in Australia to reduce the moisture susceptibility of asphalt mixes in service; however, potentially more sustainable additives (such as liquid anti-stripping agents) are also widely used internationally to reduce the risk of moisture damage in asphalt pavements.
Austroads has completed a project that investigated the use of alternative anti-stripping additives (other than hydrated lime) to reduce the moisture susceptibility of asphalt mixes in service.
An interim laboratory assessment protocol was developed to assess the effectiveness of different anti-stripping additives.
This webinar with Joe Grobler, Dr Chrysoula Pandelidi and Sean Dorahy presents:
important factors affecting the moisture susceptibility of asphalt mixes
commonly used moisture susceptibility test methods
the main benefits and disadvantages of using hydrated lime or liquid anti-stripping agents
an interim Austroads laboratory assessment protocol to evaluate the effectiveness of different anti-stripping additives.

The National Walking and Cycling Participation Survey is a survey of the Australian community to understand their participation in walking and cycling. The survey has been run every two years since 2011.
Until 2019 the survey was managed by Austroads. In 2021, Cycling and Walking Australia and New Zealand (CWANZ) took over the coordination of the survey, adding walking to get a baseline on the level of participation for walking across Australia.
In this webinar, CWANZ presented the 2023 National Walking and Cycling Participation Survey, covered its methodology and provided a high-level overview of the results. Presenters also spoke about how the data is used in different states.
Speakers were Cameron Munro, CDM Research, Fiona Goodbody, Department of Transport, Western Australia and Dr Tepi Mclaughlin from University of Western Australia.

Austroads has completed a project to replace the obsolete gyratory compactors used in design and quality control testing of asphalt mixes and update its Guide to Pavement Technology Part 4B: Asphalt.
Austroads asphalt mix design procedure currently relies on Gyropac compaction for volumetric mix design. The discontinuation of the Gyropac compactor has resulted in a significant gap in the Austroads asphalt mix design procedure and created a need for a replacement.
The Austroads Asphalt Research Technical Group has identified the Superpave™ gyratory compactor as the most likely replacement for this gap.
The project team undertook a comprehensive literature review and testing of asphalt mixes to understand the relationship between compaction in Gyropac, Servopac (setup to AS/NZS) and Superpave™ gyratory compactors to allow the adoption of the Superpave™ standard gyratory settings in the Austroads mix design procedure.
This webinar, presented by Dr Bevan Sullivan and Sean Dorahy, provided a detailed overview of the project, including the findings of the literature review and test data. There were question and answer opportunities during the session.

Austroads has completed its update of Section 3: Inspection, Testing, Monitoring and Reporting of the Guide to Bridge Technology Part 7: Maintenance and Management of Existing Bridges.
The project involved taking a fresh look at the inspection process to provide a flexible framework from which users of the Guide can develop and improve their own inspection processes.
The project team undertook an assessment of Australian and New Zealand jurisdictions, as well as some international organisations. The assessment included reviewing the processes and practices and the uses of inspection data collected at each inspection level. This was followed up with a workshop with each individual jurisdiction.
Practices varied across the jurisdictions from basic to advanced levels in terms of programming, data collection, and inspection processes. Similar observations were also made of the international practices assessed. The current practices were also assessed against the existing documentation to quantify gaps within the existing documentation.
With the current range of complexities in systems, data requirements and processes, coupled with the intention of some jurisdictions to change existing practices, it was concluded that a flexible approach is needed within the revised inspection framework to enable varying jurisdictional needs to be accommodated. The fundamentals such as defining inspection types, components and component numbering are documented as a single approach, whilst for other sections, a risk-based framework will be adopted to allow flexibility, such as in assigning inspection timings.
Key updates to the Guide include:
Condition rating vs defect mapping, allowing flexibility to adopt positions between the two processes.
Standardisation of bridge and culvert definition.
A ‘Rosetta stone’ of bridge componentisation, describing the nuances of the different jurisdictions.
Standardisation of component rating descriptors.
Reaffirming and refining inspection levels and inspection frequencies.
Audit, quality control and inspector training.
The webinar will be presented by Andy Ng and Paul Cannons.