Behavioural responses to transport congestion: peak spreading and the more efficient usage of transport infrastructure. Transport networks in cities such as Sydney are at or near capacity. It is no longer socially, environmentally or financially sustainable to continue supplying additional transport infrastructure to meet increased demand. An alternative is to make better use of existing infrastructure by spreading demand more evenly across the day. This project will test behavioural responses t ....Behavioural responses to transport congestion: peak spreading and the more efficient usage of transport infrastructure. Transport networks in cities such as Sydney are at or near capacity. It is no longer socially, environmentally or financially sustainable to continue supplying additional transport infrastructure to meet increased demand. An alternative is to make better use of existing infrastructure by spreading demand more evenly across the day. This project will test behavioural responses to increased congestion and quantify the phenomenon of peak spreading. It will assess economic costs and benefits of using congestion as a signal to encourage more efficient network usage, and examine other tools (e.g. time-based transport pricing) to encourage more efficient use of transport infrastructure.Read moreRead less
Multidimensional evaluation of the overall benefits of voluntary travel behaviour change programs. Voluntary Travel Behaviour Programs (VTBC) offer considerable promise for the management of traffic congestion and reduction in greenhouse gas and air quality emissions from road transport. Research to date has identified two outstanding issues: (1) measurement and evaluation of actual behaviour change and (2) identification of the full benefits and impacts of VTBC. Empirical studies indicate that ....Multidimensional evaluation of the overall benefits of voluntary travel behaviour change programs. Voluntary Travel Behaviour Programs (VTBC) offer considerable promise for the management of traffic congestion and reduction in greenhouse gas and air quality emissions from road transport. Research to date has identified two outstanding issues: (1) measurement and evaluation of actual behaviour change and (2) identification of the full benefits and impacts of VTBC. Empirical studies indicate that many of the benefits fall outside the transport area, including a wide range of socio-economic benefits to individuals and the community. This project will develop a survey tool for assessing benefits and impacts of VTBC within a properly designed and tested evaluation framework.Read moreRead less
Promoting active travel and public transport for a post-pandemic world. In many major cities, COVID-19 stimulated the provision of open streets, pop up bike lanes and widened pedestrian access, prompting unprecedented increases cycling and walking. While this type of infrastructure has always been supported by urban planners and designers, the pandemic has served as a vital inflection point, enabling cities to pursue long-term sustainable transport initiatives, including investment in Active Tra ....Promoting active travel and public transport for a post-pandemic world. In many major cities, COVID-19 stimulated the provision of open streets, pop up bike lanes and widened pedestrian access, prompting unprecedented increases cycling and walking. While this type of infrastructure has always been supported by urban planners and designers, the pandemic has served as a vital inflection point, enabling cities to pursue long-term sustainable transport initiatives, including investment in Active Travel (AT). There is an opportunity to promote AT as part of an integrated transport strategy, and to develop tools for the robust evaluation of AT impacts to inform future investment strategies. This proposal will provide our partner organisation Transport for New South Wales (with the knowledge required to achieve this.
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Optimising the design and implementation of public transport priority initiatives. This project strengthens national approaches to a pervasive Australian problem, growing traffic congestion deteriorating liveability, environmental health & economic performance of the cities where most Australians live. Public transport can address these issues but most is provided by buses which are caught up in traffic congestion. This project improves approaches for traffic priority design to improve the eff ....Optimising the design and implementation of public transport priority initiatives. This project strengthens national approaches to a pervasive Australian problem, growing traffic congestion deteriorating liveability, environmental health & economic performance of the cities where most Australians live. Public transport can address these issues but most is provided by buses which are caught up in traffic congestion. This project improves approaches for traffic priority design to improve the effectiveness and efficiency of on-road public transport. It optimises the design of individual and groups of priority treatments and will generate diagnostic tools to better target priority treatments. Findings will better focus Australia's approach to increasingly challenging transport futures.Read moreRead less
Dynamic vulnerability of urban road networks. Road transport networks are vital to the economic and social health of our society. Poorly performing networks lead to significant costs and adverse environmental and health impacts. This project will develop methods and tools to predict the effects of network failure through incident-related congestion at bottlenecks (e.g. congestion from accidents, vehicle breakdowns, road works, lane blockages and road closures) and to suggest remedial action plan ....Dynamic vulnerability of urban road networks. Road transport networks are vital to the economic and social health of our society. Poorly performing networks lead to significant costs and adverse environmental and health impacts. This project will develop methods and tools to predict the effects of network failure through incident-related congestion at bottlenecks (e.g. congestion from accidents, vehicle breakdowns, road works, lane blockages and road closures) and to suggest remedial action plans in the case of bottleneck formation. Incident related congestion is responsible for more than 50% of the ($9.4B p.a.) cost of congestion in Australia's major cities.Read moreRead less
Integrating Attribute Decision Heuristics into Travel Choice Models that accommodate Risk Attitude and Perceptual Conditioning. This proposal has the specific objective of integrating two disconnected literatures that are having a major influence on the behavioural and statistical performance of discrete choice models in travel choice modelling. These fields are attribute processing strategies and the conditioning of the marginal utility of attributes by risk attitude and perceptual conditioning ....Integrating Attribute Decision Heuristics into Travel Choice Models that accommodate Risk Attitude and Perceptual Conditioning. This proposal has the specific objective of integrating two disconnected literatures that are having a major influence on the behavioural and statistical performance of discrete choice models in travel choice modelling. These fields are attribute processing strategies and the conditioning of the marginal utility of attributes by risk attitude and perceptual conditioning. These two major developments have not been jointly integrated into a behaviourally richer representation of choice making. Given the encouraging evidence from both literatures, the research will determine more precisely the benefits in terms of improved estimates of willingness to pay for specific attributes and also increased predictive power. Read moreRead less
Funding on the line: public transport financing and property value capture. This project aims to develop property value capture schemes that would provide alternative funding for public transport infrastructure. It plans to model the timing and spatial patterns of property value uplift from recent investments in rail, busways and ferries in Queensland and New South Wales. It then intends to conduct a survey of Australian stakeholders and discrete choice modelling to determine willingness-to-pay. ....Funding on the line: public transport financing and property value capture. This project aims to develop property value capture schemes that would provide alternative funding for public transport infrastructure. It plans to model the timing and spatial patterns of property value uplift from recent investments in rail, busways and ferries in Queensland and New South Wales. It then intends to conduct a survey of Australian stakeholders and discrete choice modelling to determine willingness-to-pay. This data is then expected to be used to develop an institutionally, legally and politically feasible scheme for implementation in Australia, focused on cases including extension to the Gold Coast light rail network.Read moreRead less
Innovative urban traffic congestion solutions: optimising road space using networks of multi-class priority lanes. This project strengthens national approaches to a pervasive Australian problem; growing traffic congestion deteriorating liveability, environmental health and economic performance of the cities. This project improves approaches for traffic priority design to improve the efficiency of several class of vehicles and therefore, reducing traffic congestion.
Improving external validity of stated choice experiments. This project aims to deliver more accurate estimates of choice behaviour by reducing biases due to choice task complexity in surveys as well as design artefacts. Extracting 'true' preferences is challenging, not only due to possible hypothetical bias, but also due to increasingly complex choice tasks and the existence of design artefacts. This project will investigate the latter two in the context of marketing, transport, health, and envi ....Improving external validity of stated choice experiments. This project aims to deliver more accurate estimates of choice behaviour by reducing biases due to choice task complexity in surveys as well as design artefacts. Extracting 'true' preferences is challenging, not only due to possible hypothetical bias, but also due to increasingly complex choice tasks and the existence of design artefacts. This project will investigate the latter two in the context of marketing, transport, health, and environmental economics, and proposes new methodologies to extract preferences that more closely reflect true behaviour in real markets.Read moreRead less
Business location decisions. This project aims to develop a forecasting model system for economic planning that integrates business (re-) location and co-location choices. Improved transport infrastructure connects places and can influence the location of businesses. This project will use forecasting models to quantify the drivers of firm location decisions linked to an integrated strategic transport and land use modelling system. This project expects to provide guidance for transport investment ....Business location decisions. This project aims to develop a forecasting model system for economic planning that integrates business (re-) location and co-location choices. Improved transport infrastructure connects places and can influence the location of businesses. This project will use forecasting models to quantify the drivers of firm location decisions linked to an integrated strategic transport and land use modelling system. This project expects to provide guidance for transport investment that brings gains in productivity to industry and the economy and wellbeing to individuals and society.Read moreRead less