Queensland Department of Transport and Main Roads

Transit service reliability is an important determinant of service quality, which has been mainly studied from the perspective of passengers waiting at stops. Day-to-day variability of travel time also deteriorates service reliability, but is not a well-researched area in the literature partly due to the lack of comprehensive data sets on bus travel times. While this problem is now being addressed through the uptake of global positioning system (GPS)-based tracking systems, methodologies to analyze these data sets are limited. This paper addresses this issue by investigating day-to-day variability in public transport travel time using a GPS data set for a bus route in Melbourne, Australia. It explores the nature and shape of travel time distributions for different departure time windows at different times of the day. Factors causing travel time variability of public transport are also explored using a linear regression analysis. The results show that in narrower departure time windows, travel time distributions are best characterized by normal distributions. For wider departure time windows, peak-hour travel times follow normal distributions, while off-peak travel times follow lognormal distributions. The factors contributing to the variability of travel times are found to be land use, route length, number of traffic signals, number of bus stops, and departure delay relative to the scheduled departure time. Travel time variability is higher in the AM peak and lower in the off-peak. The impact of rainfall on travel time variability is only found significant in the AM peak. While the paper presents new methods for analyzing GPS-based data, there is much scope for expanding knowledge through wider applications to new data sets and using a wider range of explanatory variables.

During the last two decades the public sector has come under increasing pressure to improve performance and demonstrate greater transparency and accountability. This pressure has resulted in public sector organisations facing shifts in ways of operating. Various corporate change strategies have been adopted by different public sector agencies, many of these cloning managerial practices from the private sector. These changes in public sector organisations have enormous significance for regional economic and social development. While there is a growing body of knowledge dealing with the management of corporate change there are still significant gaps in understanding the process. While there is much written on public versus private corporate change, there is little distinguishing between change in different types of public sector organisations. This paper analyses change management processes and seeks to determine whether a hybrid model of “new public management” delivers more favourable outcomes than a model focused on cost reduction and private sector prejudice for the bottom line.

INTRODUCTION: Cyclists are increasingly overrepresented in traffic crash casualties in Australia. There is evidence that better cycling infrastructure increases participation, but whether it reduces the numbers of injured cyclists is less clear. This study examined injury outcomes of crashes in different cycling environments. METHODS: Adult cyclists injured on- and off-road were recruited from emergency departments from November 2009 to May 2010 in the Australian Capital Territory. Eligible participants (n = 313/372, 84.1%) were interviewed and their injury self-reports were corroborated with medical records where available. Participants who had crashed in transport-related areas (n = 202, 64.5%) are the focus of this article. RESULTS: Participants had crashed in traffic (39.1%), in cycle lanes (7.9%), on shared paths (36.1%), and on footpaths (16.8%). Based on average weekly traffic counts, the crash involvement rate per 1000 cyclists was 11.8 on shared paths compared to 5.8 on cycle lanes. Over half of the participants (52.0%) were injured in single-vehicle bicycle crashes. The remainder involved other road users, including motor vehicles (20.8%), other bicycles (18.8%), pedestrians (6.4%), and animals (2.0%). Pedestrians were involved in 16.4 percent of crashes on shared paths. Minor injuries (Abbreviated Injury Scale [AIS] 1) were sustained by 58.4 percent of cyclists, moderately severe injuries (AIS 2) were sustained by 36.1 percent of cyclists, and 5.4 percent of cyclists were seriously injured (AIS 3+). The average treatment required was 1.8 days with 7.5 days off work and cost to the cyclist of $869 excluding medical treatment. Cyclists who crashed on shared paths or in traffic had higher injury severity scores (ISS; 4.4, 4.0) compared to those in cycle lanes or on footpaths (3.3, 3.4) and required more treatment days (2.8, 1.7 versus 0.0, 0.2). CONCLUSIONS: Fewer cyclists were injured in on-road cycle lanes than in other cycling environments, and a high proportion of injuries were incurred on shared paths. This study highlights an urgent need to determine appropriate criteria and management strategies for paths classified as suitable for shared or segregated usage. Supplemental materials are available for this article. Go to the publisher's online edition of Traffic Injury Prevention to view the supplemental files.

This paper presents results regarding the potential of lignosulfonate (LS) to control the swelling of expansive soil. One-dimensional swell tests were performed on untreated and LS-treated remoulded samples of Australian expansive soil from the state of Queensland. The test results indicated that LS has significant influence on the swelling behaviour of this expansive soil. The results were compared with those of identical cement-treated soil samples, and it was found that LS could be a economical and environmentally friendly alternative to traditional alkaline additives. In addition, the behaviour of LS-treated specimens during repeated freezing and thawing cycles was measured. The results indicated significant improvement in the percentage mass loss in LS-treated specimens compared with cement-treated specimens. The microstructural analysis of the untreated and the LS-treated samples showed soil surface area reduction in the treated specimens, which in turn reduced the affinity of the specimens towards moisture uptake, resulting in a reduction in the swell potential of the otherwise expansive soil. The use of LS as a novel non-traditional stabiliser for expansive soil appears to be a viable solution in view of the sustainable use of waste by-products and green construction.

The emergence of new technologies allows better monitoring of traffic conditions and understanding of urban network dynamics. Bluetooth technology is becoming widespread, as it represents a cost-effective means for capturing road traffic in both arterials and motorways. Although the extraction of travel time from Bluetooth data is fairly straightforward, data reliability and processing is still challenging with the issues of penetration rate, mode discrimination, and detection quality. This paper presents a methodological contribution to the use of Bluetooth data for the spatiotemporal analysis of a large urban network (Brisbane, Australia). It introduces the concept of the Bluetooth origin-destination (B-OD) matrix, which is built from a network of 79 Bluetooth detectors located within the Brisbane urban area. The B-OD matrix describes the dynamics of a subpopulation of vehicles, between pairs of detectors. The results show that the characteristics of urban networks can be effectively represented through B-OD matrices. A comparison with loop detector data enables an assessment of the results' significance. Then, the spatiotemporal structure of the network is analyzed with two different clustering analyses, namely, latent Dirichlet allocation (LDA) and $K$-means. While LDA is used to detect a temporal pattern, the $K$-means algorithm highlights Bluetooth fundamental diagram (BFD) classes. The results show that Bluetooth data has the potential to be a reliable data source for traffic monitoring. By highlighting hidden structures of a large area, the algorithm outputs allow us to provide the road operators with a fine spatiotemporal analysis of their network, in terms of traffic conditions.

Issue addressed A key strategy to increase active travel is the construction of bicycle infrastructure. Tools to evaluate this strategy are limited. This study assessed the usefulness of a smartphone GPS tracking system for evaluating the impact of this strategy on cycling behaviour. Methods Cycling usage data were collected from Queenslanders who used a GPS tracking app on their smartphone from 2013-2014. 'Heat' and volume maps of the data were reviewed, and GPS bicycle counts were compared with surveillance data and bicycle counts from automatic traffic-monitoring devices. Results Heat maps broadly indicated that changes in cycling occurred near infrastructure improvements. Volume maps provided changes in counts of cyclists due to these improvements although errors were noted in geographic information system (GIS) geo-coding of some GPS data. Large variations were evident in the number of cyclists using the app in different locations. These variations limited the usefulness of GPS data for assessing differences in cycling across locations. Conclusion Smartphone GPS data are useful in evaluating the impact of improved bicycle infrastructure in one location. Using GPS data to evaluate differential changes in cycling across multiple locations is problematic when there is insufficient traffic-monitoring devices available to triangulate GPS data with bicycle traffic count data. So what? The use of smartphone GPS data with other data sources is recommended for assessing how infrastructure improvements influence cycling behaviour.

AbstractHeterogeneous traffic flow contains the mixed operation of the different vehicle classes such as cars, trucks and buses. Previous study has indicated that the overall stability of the heterogeneous traffic flow is governed by a weighted mean of stability parameters corresponding to each vehicle class and is not affected by the order in which a vehicle class is put into the system, for example either car or truck. However, it has been recently reported that the effect of mixed composition on traffic flow dynamics is also determined by the car-following vehicle type, that is either car following a car or car following a truck. This paper aims at investigating analytically how different car-following combinations (i.e. the following type) influence the overall stability of heterogeneous traffic flow dynamics. More specifically, we will consider the four types of car-following behaviour such as car–car, car–truck, truck–car, and truck–truck. The effect of such car-following types on the overall linear stability condition of the heterogeneous traffic flow will be studied using a generalised multi-class car-following model in which the optimal speed function is not only dependent on the the space headway between two consecutive vehicles as in previous study of Mason and Woods [1997. "Car-following Model of Multispecies Systems of Road Traffic." Physical Review E: 2203–2214] but also on the and the relative speed between those two consecutive vehicles.Keywords: heterogeneous traffic flowcar-following combinationstraffic instabilitieslinear method AcknowledgementsThe author wishes to thank Professor Eddie Wilson and Dr Jonathan Ward at the University of Bristol, UK, during their visits to the University of Leeds, UK, for discussions leading to this paper.FundingThe author wishes to thank the UK Engineering and Physical Sciences Research Council (EPSRC) for funding project EP/J002186/1.

The macroscopic fundamental diagram (MFD) relates space mean density and flow. The existence with dynamic features was confirmed in a congested urban network in downtown Yokohama, Japan, with a real data set. Because the MFD represents areawide network traffic performance, studies have reported on perimeter control strategies and areawide traffic state estimated with the MFD concept. However, few reports of real-world examples from signalized arterial networks are available. Data are fused from multiple sources (Bluetooth devices, loop detectors, and signal phase timing). A framework is presented for the development of the MFD for Brisbane, Queensland, Australia. Existence of the MFD in the Brisbane arterial network is confirmed. MFDs (from the entire network and several subregions) are evaluated to determine the spatial partitioning to represent network performance. The findings confirm the usefulness of appropriate network partitioning for traffic monitoring and incident detection. Future research directions are addressed.

The common approach to estimate bus dwell time at a Bus Rapid Transit (BRT) station platform is to apply the traditional dwell-time methodology derived for suburban bus stops. Current dwell-time models are sensitive toward bus type and fare collection policy along with the number of boarding and alighting passengers. However, they fall short in accounting for the effects of passengers walking on a relatively longer BRT station platform. Analysis presented in this paper shows that the average walking time of a passenger at a BRT platform is 10 times more than that of a bus stop. The requirement of walking to the bus entry door at the BRT station platform may lead to the bus experiencing a higher dwell time. This paper presents a theory for a BRT network that explains the loss of station capacity during peak period operation. It also highlights shortcomings of present available bus dwell-time models suggested for the analysis of BRT operation.

It may be possible to use nonhuman biological entities for empirical study of pedestrian crowds under emergency conditions. A literature review is used to examine how the study of mass movement of organisms might enhance the safety of pedestrians during emergency egress. Recent findings from experiments with panicking ants are presented as examples, with two scenarios, of how such experiments can be used as a basis for the design of solutions to ensure safe egress of pedestrians in emergencies. Although the experiments are still in progress and it is too early to draw definitive conclusions with statistical significance, some preliminary results show promise in using ants to test models for pedestrian traffic in emergency conditions. Because of the lack of complementary data during emergency or panic-inducing situations, experiments such as these with ants provide alternate empirical ways to test whether designs developed by means of mathematical models may actually be efficacious and improve the safety of pedestrians.

The harsh Australian environment makes the use of steel reinforcement in concrete structures problematic on account of corrosion. The probability of corrosion damage will significantly increase in the years to come and will become a major problem not only in coastal regions but also in inland parts of Australia due to increasing carbon dioxide concentration, temperature, and relative humidity as a consequence of climate change. In the last two decades, glass fiber-reinforced polymer (GFRP) composite bars have become an alternative to steel reinforcement for reinforcing concrete structures exposed to harsh environments. The reinforcing material is noncorrodible, nonmagnetic, lightweight, and has high tensile strength, thus making it a viable reinforcing material for concrete structures. This paper provides the state-of-the-practice in the research, development, and application of GFRP bars, with the aim of properly informing the engineering community about this alternative, noncorrodible reinforcing technology. The paper also presents a strategy toward the development of fiber-reinforced polymer bar material specifications with the aim to ensure quality use and application of the GFRP material in a wide range of applications in Australia in the years to come. Moreover, the best practices and data presented in this paper will be very useful in the development of unified international standards and specifications for GFRP bars.

Lime slurry pressure injection (LSPI) is a stabilization operation used in problematic soils by transportation industries with the aim of improving the geotechnical properties and bringing excessive maintenance costs to an acceptable standard. This paper presents detailed field and laboratory studies of a lime/fly ash stabilized site at Breeza, NSW, Australia. The mixing of slurry into the soil with depths was investigated by excavating a trench while the improvement of geotechnical properties was determined in detailed field and laboratory tests. Visual observations of the surfaces of an excavated trench showed slurry to be distributed within the shrinkage cracks in the desiccated upper soil horizon whereas slurry was conveyed through planes of hydraulic fracture in the soils at greater depths. Laboratory swell tests on the stabilized soils demonstrated a statistically significant reduction of the intrinsic swell properties in the upper horizon of highly plastic clayey soils by LSPI. A gain in soil strength was observed in cone penetrometer test soundings conducted in stabilized soils. Scanning electron microscope and x-ray diffraction studies proved the underlying physicochemical and cementitious reaction processes in stabilized soils. Aggregation of the soils was observed with the outward diffusion of calcium cations within proximity of slurry seams and resulted in a subdued shrink/swell propensity.

The Sydney Olympics held in September 2000 provided an opportunity to monitor the planning of transport provision for the world's greatest sporting spectacular. As the single largest major event, the pressures on a city's transport system are enormous, as witnessed by the previous Games in Atlanta and Barcelona. This paper takes a value-chain approach to assess transport performance as a crucial element in the delivery of the Sydney Olympic Games. We begin with a brief overview of strategic value, highlighting some generic aspects of value chains followed by the transport delivery system that came to the fore as significant 'drivers' in the value chain. This is followed by a summary of the effectiveness of the buses, trains, taxis, roads and the airport. A more detailed look is provided of the private bus sector where the problems leading up the opening of the Games received a great deal of media attention. The paper concludes with two stories, one good, one not so good, about transport and the Olympic Games.

Many studies have compared Global Positioning System (GPS) and diary records to estimate the amount of misreporting of travel that occurs in self-report diaries. This paper examines the comparison of GPS and diary records in detail to further the understanding of what leads to misreporting in diary surveys. The research is based on a recent comparative survey undertaken in the area of Melbourne, Victoria, Australia. The survey is analyzed in depth, and diary records are compared in detail with GPS records to check whether the two groups of data match. Departure and arrival times, trip lengths, and trip times are compared. Reasons for mismatches are suggested. The paper proposes some values as standards for similar analyses in the future.

In this paper, we examine the main concepts of transport pricing in an urban environment, focusing on the automobile, public transport and walking or cycling as travel alternatives. A review of the literature on the first-best and second-best pricing policies is provided, with an emphasis on public transport pricing, including the setting of frequency and vehicle capacity, the influence of bus congestion externalities and the interactions between transport pricing reforms and the broader tax system. A model is developed to analyse the impact of non-motorized transport on optimal public transport pricing policy, congestion interactions between cars and buses associated with the transfer of passengers at bus stops and the existence of a capacity constraint within the public transport mode.

The southeast Queensland ( SEQ ) region of Australia is recognised for frequent thunderstorms documented through numerous studies including high‐impact severe thunderstorm cases which have caused insured losses exceeding $1 billion AUD . Despite a modest body of scientific literature, basic questions regarding the role of climate, synoptic and local‐scale (<10 km) processes affecting the variability of thunderstorms still remain. In an effort to advance these questions as part of the Coastal Convective Interactions Experiment ( CCIE ), this study integrates multiple datasets across an 18‐year period (July 1997–June 2015) to provide a mesoscale climatological analysis of the SEQ hailstorms and associated environmental conditions. On a multi‐year time‐scale, the relationship between the El Niño S outhern Oscillation and hailstorm frequency is consistent with previous studies. On synoptic scales, a southeasterly change situation coupled with a sea breeze was found to provide the most favourable environment for hailstorms, particularly for southwest SEQ . On the local scale, hail development within convective cells was found to be most frequent within the inland limb of the maritime air mass on sea‐breeze days. This observation suggests the sea‐breeze air masses may become favourable for convection after sufficient modification during inland propagation.

Aims The aim of this study was to report the outcome of the non-operative treatment of high-grade posterior cruciate ligament (PCL) injuries, particularly Hughston grade III injuries, which have not previously been described. Patients and Methods This was a prospective study involving 46 consecutive patients who were athletes with MRI-confirmed isolated PCL injuries presenting within four weeks of injury. All had Hughston grade II (25 athletes) or III (21 athletes) injuries. Our non-operative treatment regimen involved initial bracing, followed by an individualised rehabilitation programme determined by the symptoms and physical signs. The patients were reviewed until they had returned to sports-specific training, and were reviewed again at a mean of 5.2 years (3 to 9). Results The mean time to return to sports-specific training was 10.6 weeks and the mean time to return to full competitive sport was 16.4 weeks (10 to 40). A total of 42 patients (91.3%) were playing at the same or higher level of sport two years after the injury, with a mean Tegner activity score of 9 (5 to 10). At five years, 32 patients (69.5%) were playing at the same or higher level of sport, and 38 patients (82.6%) were playing at a competitive level, with a mean Tegner activity score of 9 (5 to 10). Conclusions Medium-term review of a series of athletes suggests that commencing the non-operative management of isolated, Hughston grade II and III PCL injuries within four weeks of injury gives excellent functional outcomes with a high proportion returning to the same or higher level of sport. Cite this article: Bone Joint J 2017;99-B:774–8.

With ongoing introductions into Australia since the 1700s, the European rabbit (Oryctolagus cuniculus) has become one of the most widely distributed and abundant vertebrate pests, adversely impacting Australia's biodiversity and agroeconomy. To understand the population and range dynamics of the species and its impacts better, occurrence and abundance data have been collected by researchers and citizens from sites covering a broad spectrum of climatic and environmental conditions in Australia. The lack of a common and accessible repository for these data has, however, limited their use in determining important spatiotemporal drivers of the structure and dynamics of the geographical range of rabbits in Australia. To meet this need, we created the Australian National Rabbit Database, which combines more than 50 yr of historical and contemporary survey data collected from throughout the range of the species in Australia. The survey data, obtained from a suite of complementary monitoring methods, were combined with high-resolution weather, climate, and environmental information, and an assessment of data quality. The database provides records of rabbit occurrence (689,265 records) and abundance (51,241 records, >120 distinct sites) suitable for identifying the spatiotemporal drivers of the rabbit's distribution and for determining spatial patterns of variation in its key life-history traits, including maximum rates of population growth. Because all data are georeferenced and date stamped, they can be coupled with information from other databases and spatial layers to explore the potential effects of rabbit occurrence and abundance on Australia's native wildlife and agricultural production. The Australian National Rabbit Database is an important tool for understanding and managing the European rabbit in its invasive range and its effects on native biodiversity and agricultural production. It also provides a valuable resource for addressing questions related to the biology, success, and impacts of invasive species more generally. No copyright or proprietary restrictions are associated with the use of this data set other than citation of this Data Paper.

Science, bureaucracy and organized religion have played an important role in shaping the construction of disability--as the broken, incomplete and imperfect self, as the case requiring management, and as the object of pity and charity. This paper looks critically at the way in which concepts such as the medical model of disability and the evolving genetic model of disability have shaped the way in which we construct disability and, consequently, the way in which we treat people with disability--through isolation, segregation and elimination. These constructions of disability also operate to define and confine the spiritual journey of people with disability. The author argues for a more integrated conception of self, based not upon an empirical, mechanized and bureaucratic world-view, but upon an integrated, interdependent and holistic view of self and society.

Abstract Autonomous Vehicles (AVs) are being widely tested on public roads in several countries such as the USA, Canada, France, Germany, and Australia. For the transparent deployment of AVs in California, the California Department of Motor Vehicles (CA DMV) commissioned AV manufacturers to draft and publish reports on disengagements and crashes. These reports must be processed before any statistical analysis, which is cumbersome and time-consuming. Our dataset presents the processed disengagement data from 2014 to 2019, crash data till the 10 th of March 2020 and supplementary road network and land-use data extracted from OpenStreetMap. Primary data are manually assessed and converted into an easily processed format. Our processed data will be advantageous to the research community and enable accelerated research in this domain. For example, the data can be utilised to discern trends in disengagement, observe the distribution of disengagement causes, and investigate the contributory factors of the crashes. Such investigations can subsequently improve the reporting protocols and make policies and laws for the smooth deployment of this disruptive technology.