AP-G84/04 Best practice in road use data collection, analysis ... - WIM

Accessed by AR - ARRB TRANSPORT RESEARCH on 04 Feb 2005
Austroads 2004
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Best Practices in Road Use Data Collection, Analysis and Reporting
It is good practice to develop a schedule of standard data and information that are available (such
as audited and processed data required for normal RA reporting purposes) and the cost of
provision of those data to the public in the required formats (hard copy or electronic copy).
A schedule of charges for labour and overheads should also be prepared for non-standard
requests that involve utilising RA resources in fulfilling a private or commercial inquiry.
Further sources of road use data are available through infrastructure deployed for other purposes.
These include WIM data and other data collected under the Austroads program on national
performance indicators (Austroads 2001). More recently, SCATS, freeway incident management
systems and other Intelligent Transport Systems now also provide ‘cheap’ traffic data efficiently.
Commercial organisations also, increasingly, have access to traffic data through the use of tracking
systems such as GPS and mobile phone positioning technology.
New sources of ITS data will originate, not only from RAs, but also from commercial organisations.
The commercial structures of such arrangements (licensing, joint venture) will need to be
examined. This may lead further down the path of disaggregating traffic counting into its
component activities, i.e. collection, aggregation and dissemination. Already, out-sourcing occurs
at the collection level in many RAs.
Furthermore, the delivery or dissemination channels for this expanded data and information will
include specialist third parties such as the media, Internet and Telematics service providers as well
as mobile phone operators.
In this new environment, reporting of traffic data would become highly customised and
personalised, with service providers creating value by differentiating and customising traffic data
for their user base. There could be complementary roles where the RAs provide the basic raw or
simply processed data for internal users. The general public and the service providers undertake
further analysis and transformation of traffic data for their customers.
Data accessibility and its pricing will continue to be an issue facing RAs in the years to come.
Policies need to be established. RTA NSW has in place manuals for the sale of data and finance
manual on pricing. The development of a pricing policy especially for external users is complex and
common amongst RAs. It is an area recommended for further research.
The issue of data integration and public-private partnership are further addressed in Sections 5
and 6 respectively.