ARRB Senior Technology Leader talks traffic management best practice

Last month, Dr Aut Karndacharuk, Senior Technology Leader at ARRB, presented two papers at the 39th Australasian Transport Research Forum (ATRF) held in Auckland, New Zealand.

The forum was hosted by the Department of Civil and Environmental Engineering, and the Transportation Research Centre, at the Grafton Campus of The University of Auckland.

Dr Karndacharuk’s first presentation covered the Traffic Incident Management (TIM) paper which was also co-authored by Mr Asif Hassan of ARRB. The contents were based on the Austroads research report which was featured previously on the ARRB website and can be downloaded from here.  

Key learnings from Dr Karndacharuk’s presentation on TIM included:

• A harmonised incident management methodology for road transport agencies across Australasia.
• An outline of the contemporary practices and techniques used by various jurisdictions in Australia and NZ in achieving the incident management goal of restoring normal traffic quickly and safety in a coordinated manner. These techniques include the adaptation of advanced technology such as Bluetooth, smartphone and automatic incident detection systems.

The second paper that Dr Karndacharuk presented was titled ‘Balancing mobility, safety and amenity: roundabouts in Marsden Park, Australia’ and focuses on the nexus analysis of roundabouts.’

The presentation highlighted:

• A review of the nexus of roundabouts in the context of the land-use development (Section 94) contribution process in NSW.
• The review methodology is novel because it took into account the safety and amenity aspects of intersection design in addition to the traffic management objectives in the nexus assessment process.

Delegates included professionals from central and local government agencies, industry, academic and research institutions in Australasia.

"The Leaders Forum Panel Discussion was extremely compelling as it brought together leading experts in transport research, industry and policy to discuss the strategic challenges and opportunities facing the transport system." said Dr  Karndacharuk. "Common themes were issues associated with infrastructure and congestion management, safety and resilience as well as multi-disciplinary collaboration, and the potential of transport data, technology and research to address the critical issues. It is reassuring to see that these topics are largely, if not entirely, consistent with what have been identified in ARRB’s strategic plan."

The ATRF was combined with the 4th Transport Knowledge Conference (TKC) which allowed the organising committee to bring in international keynote speakers such as Dr Jari and Stephen Perkins from the Internal Transport Forum /Organisation for Economic Co-operation and Development.

The ATRF is the principal transport research conference in Australia and New Zealand. It brings together transport researchers, policymakers, advisors and practitioners from a range of disciplines to share and build upon the latest research and thinking.