Formerly the ‘Australian Road Research Board’, ARRB Group was formed in 1960 and incorporated in 1965. The members of the company are the state, territory and federal government road agencies in Australia, who established the organisation as a means of cooperating to undertake research of national importance, which they could not justify carrying out individually.
During the 1960s, the staff of the Board operated out of an annex of the Country Roads Board, Kew (now VicRoads), located in what is now a tram terminus. In the early 1970s, work began on the Australian Road Research Centre (ARRC) on land located in Vermont South. The site was previously an apple orchard and to this day, the last remaining apple trees from the orchard can be found in the north-west corner of the Vermont South site (the apple trees are included in the heritage overlay of the site). In 1972, staff moved into the custom built premises.
In 2010, the Vermont South site continues to be ARRB Group’s headquarters, with other offices located in Perth, Brisbane, Sydney and a new office recently opened in Adelaide. We also have a Luxmoore Parking Consulting office in East Melbourne, along with international offices in Dubai (United Arab Emirates), Jakarta (Indonesia) and Xiamen (China).
A book celebrating the 50 years of ARRB will be released later this year. A few of the major research contributions include; the role that well-built and maintained road shoulders played in enhancing the life of low-cost roads; enhanced understanding of asphalt fatigue and of the role of the properties of the bituminous binder; importance off truck suspensions on the loads that a truck applies to the road surface; reduced travel time and reduced pollution based on transport operations and congestion management research; and unique software solutions to assist with consistent application of best practice in road safety engineering.