Remote Roads Upgrade Pilot Program

The Federal Government’s Remote Roads Upgrade Pilot Program is a welcome opportunity to improve the safety of regional roads.

State, territory and local councils can apply to have up to 80% of project costs funded by the Federal Government.

What projects does the Remote Roads Upgrade Pilot Program cover?

To be eligible for funding, projects must meet the following criteria:

• unsealed or degraded roads 20 kilometres or longer with a low safety rating.
• must not have previously received funding under another program, or received significant investment in the last five years.
• must be an improvement, and not maintenance.
• must be submitted by Sunday, February 20, 2022.

Applications can be submitted by state, territory and local governments who are eligible for funding under the Roads to Recovery Program.

What is a safety rating?

Safety ratings, otherwise known as infrastructure risk assessments, involve identifying the road and roadside factors that contribute to exposure, likelihood and severity to calculate the risk on a section of road. Safety ratings can be produced for vehicle occupants, motorcycle riders, pedestrians and cyclists.

The Program applications seek a current risk rating using a recognised standard, preferably using the Australian National Risk Assessment Model (ANRAM) or the Australian Road Assessment Program (AusRAP). This is requested for both the current and future (based on the design) risk rating for the road.

A low safety rating is generally considered to be and AusRAP 1- or 2-Star rating.

For an AusRAP assessment, the main output is Star Ratings, which reflect the risk as it relates to an individual road user. 1-Star roads have the highest risk and 5-Star roads the lowest risk.

Source: ViDA

ANRAM is a derivative of AusRAP with additional crash types, and the inclusion of crash data. For an ANRAM assessment, the main output is an estimate of the Fatal and Serious Injuries (FSI) for the next 5 years, which represents a snapshot of collective severe crash risk at a point in time.

How do I find out the safety rating?

ARRB can support project applications by assessing the current safety rating of the road and the future safety rating of the proposed design. We have assessed over 100,000 km of network for State, Territory and Local Governments across Australia.

ARRB led the development of AusRAP and ANRAM and has contributed to a global initiative (iRAP - the International Road Assessment Programme) that has seen over 1 million kilometres of roads assessed across 102 countries.

ARRB has staff accredited by iRAP and has been Australia’s iRAP Centre of Excellence for over 10 years.

ARRB’s expertise in assessing infrastructure risk sees us participate on the advisory groups for Australia and New Zealand (Austroads Steering Committee, and the technical Infrastructure Risk Assessment Group), as well as the iRAP Global Technical Committee (GTC) – the group that oversee model development and the technical integrity of iRAP protocols worldwide

How do I contact ARRB ?

Please contact Emily McLean if you would like to find out more, or have your project assessed.

p: +61 466 753 173

e: emily.mclean@arrb.com.au

How do I find out more about the Pilot Program?

For more information about the Pilot Program visit https://investment.infrastructure.gov.au/about/national-initiatives/remote-roads-upgrade.aspx