Transport investment planning, tools, and frameworks

Our Managing transport system investment risk project has been completed, and a final report has been produced. That report is available as a download towards the bottom of this page.

Participants on the project were the Department of Transport Western Australia, Main Roads Western Australia, University of Western Australia, and Edith Cowan University.

The context of the project, in a word, was change. Transport planning has to take on board a changing environment, such as technology development, consumer demand and business models. It also has witnessed changes in the possibilities of Mobility as a Service, and the quantity, quality, and availability of public- and privately-owned data.

And that’s just the known changes. There’s certainly more change coming transport’s way on the horizon!

Adapting portfolio-wide strategic infrastructure investment planning and management tools, guidelines and frameworks is required to account for recent trends and emerging risks. With a focus on Perth, Western Australia, this project considered four application areas:

• • patronage forecasting tools through an advanced understanding of factors influencing patronage trends
  • digital journey planning tools
  • asset management guidelines; and
  • project assessment and prioritisation frameworks

Main findings

Be sure to download the report for the full picture, but here’s a few highlights:

Public transport patronage

• For all journeys across the metropolitan area (for commuting and other purposes, all ticket types, all times) fare is a significant contributing factor to patronage numbers, second in importance only to bus service coverage and frequency.
• For all journeys across all areas, bus service frequency and coverage (measured by bus service kilometres) is the most important factor, followed by fare and then economic factors (worker migration rates (worker visas) and employment rates).
• For commuting journeys, the most important contributing factors are, as with the case of all journeys, bus service frequency and coverage (measured by bus service kilometres), followed by fare, then economic conditions (CBD office vacancy rates plays an important role here because it is a strong indicator for the number of jobs in the city).

Digital journey planning

• Approximately two-thirds of respondents used journey planners at least ‘occasionally’, indicating that these systems are an important service and hence their ability to function consistently and accurately impacts the travel decisions made by respondents.
• Many consider journey planners only relevant to shared and active transport modes. It was found that the vast majority of respondents (approximately 88%) used them for car trips taken as a driver.
• One recommendation is to investigate travel discounts for continued use of public and active transport modes – there is a desire from respondents to be rewarded for continued ‘good’ use of transport systems.

Uncertainty relating to connected and automated vehicles

In terms of the big picture for CAV uptake, asset managers need to be proactively engaged with three key areas:

• Development of a framework for digital infrastructure to support safe, cybercrime protected vehicle-to-vehicle and vehicle-infrastructure communication.
• National policies, standards, governance and regulation for CAV uptake and CAV infrastructure decisions.
• Provide mechanisms to improve safety.

Prioritisation of infrastructure investment proposals in the face of uncertainty

• Considerable demand uncertainties were evident, which can lead to uncertainty in all benefits and disbenefits.
• Projects that are often inflexible in the way they can be used, are exposed to more uncertainties than others.
• Identifying “triggers’ would be useful as it can flag potential loss of utilisations without any detailed analyses.

Download the report

iMOVE is pleased to offer here a downloadable copy of the final report for this project, entitled Managing Transport System Investment Risk: Enhancing patronage predictions and adapting strategic asset management and appraisal processes to account for emerging trends and uncertainty – Close-out Report.

Please click the button below to obtain your copy.