The report models petrol prices in 24 countries around the world - the world oil price determines the energy content of the petrol price, and then adding in taxes produces a prediction of the country's petrol price. The analysis also allows a prediction of how responsive a county's petrol price is to changes in the world oil price.

• Prices for Petrol and Gasoline–Modelling a Global Phenomenon
  
  research_report_150.pdf
  (6.57 MB)

• World Petrol Prices Model
  
  RR150-World-20-countries-petrol-oilp1.xlsx
  (3.07 MB)

A common rational for the making of transport-related forecasts is the need to anticipate the growth of transport activity and the demand it will place on transport infrastructure. Anticipation of this demand allows for forward planning of needed improvements/additions to key parts of the networks.

As such, it is useful to examine how close past Bureau forecasts were to predicting this growth, and to learn from any obvious errors.
This is the aim of the current report.

• Forecasting Australian Transport: A Review of Past Bureau Forecasts
  
  rr_149.pdf
  (3.16 MB)

This report benchmarks the costs of road construction and the timeliness of infrastructure procurement processes for projects undertaken by states and territories since 2015. BITRE undertook the analysis under the guidance of the Infrastructure Working Group of the Transport and Infrastructure Council. Road construction costs include total project costs and key cost components such as construction and project management. The procurement timeliness benchmarks cover all stages of procurement from the initial notice of the project to financial completion. This report is an update of the Transport and Infrastructure Council's 2015 Infrastructure Benchmarking Report and contributes to the goal of improving value for money in infrastructure investment.

• Road construction cost and infrastructure procurement benchmarking: 2017 update
  
  rr148.pdf
  (1.87 MB)

BITRE undertook two rounds of ex-post evaluations of national road investment projects: one in 2005–2007 and the other in 2014–2016. Available evidence suggests that there is much room for improvement in the quality of Australian road CBAs if they are to be used as an effective tool for ranking options and prioritising projects. The net present value (NPV) was over-estimated by significant margins in some of the selected case study projects. Over-estimation in NPV was largely caused by over-estimation of road user benefits (up to 500 per cent), with the errors mostly coming from travel time cost saving estimates. Inaccurate traffic forecasts and methodology errors were mostly responsible for the over-estimated road user benefits. There was no evidence of systematic cost overruns for the projects selected for ex-post review. Lessons learned include recommendations for improvements in CBA documentation and review, traffic forecasts, and estimation of road user benefits and residual values.

• Ex-post Economic Evaluation of National Road Investment Projects–Volume 1 Synthesis Report
  
  rr_145_vol1.pdf
  (3.87 MB)

• Ex-post Economic Evaluation of National Road Investment Projects–Volume 2 Case Studies
  
  rr_145_vol2.pdf
  (6.94 MB)

Well-managed, modern and functioning infrastructure underpins much of the economic prosperity of Australia. It is thus crucial that Australia's infrastructure keeps up with the needs of the community.

While some infrastructure asset types, namely public roads and airports, have made significant progress in performance measurement, for others there is a dearth of information or public engagement. The patchwork approach that has resulted means that Australia may be missing out on the potential benefits of consistent and widespread performance measurement: improved accountability, incentivised performance, and better performance evaluation. This report introduces and explores many of the issues surrounding infrastructure performance measurement that should be considered in the context of providing greater consistency across infrastructure asset types.

• Measuring infrastructure asset performance and customer satisfaction: A review of existing frameworks
  
  rr_147.pdf
  (1.81 MB)

Road transport technologies are evolving rapidly. Recent years have seen the expansion of intelligent transport systems (ITS), such as ramp metering and signal coordination, and low-level vehicle automation. In coming years, communication platforms will connect vehicles, thereby enabling Cooperative-ITS (C-ITS) technologies, such as collision avoidance systems. Car manufacturers and technology companies are actively developing fully automated vehicles. This report summarises estimates of the costs and benefits of ITS, C-ITS and automated vehicles from the existing Australian and international literature. It also provides policy makers with guidance on what further research would improve understanding of the implications of these technologies under Australian conditions.

• Costs and benefits of emerging road transport technologies
  
  research-report-146-emerging-road-transport-technologies.pdf
  (2.54 MB)

The research provides a solid evidence-base to understand who is undertaking lengthy commutes (those longer than 45 minutes one way), their prevalence and trends. It also explores whether some individuals undertake lengthy commutes for long periods or whether it tends to be temporary.

• Lengthy commutes in Australia
  
  rr_144.pdf
  (23.61 MB)

• Data figures from report 144
  
  Data_Figures_Report144.xlsx
  (493.22 KB)

The shipping container has revolutionised freight transport over the last half-century but its success is bringing challenges, not least in landside container movements. Port-induced road traffic congestion impacts on port arteries and communities and undermines port efficiency. Policymakers and planners seek to shift activities from roads to rail. This is a challenge, however, because most of the containers move over short distances, where trains are relatively uncompetitive. Despite that, there are instances where port–hinterland rail services exist. This report analyses the underlying necessary conditions that need to prevail for those rail services to be sustainable.

• Why short-haul intermodal rail services succeed
  
  rr_139.pdf
  (3.51 MB)

This report presents 20-year forecasts of exports and imports of containerised and non-containerised freight and sea passenger movements through Australia's five largest capital city ports and, in aggregation, all other ports. The forecasts, which update those previously published by BITRE in 2002, 2006 and 2010, are driven by population, real income, exchange rates, import prices and export prices. The most recent economic outlook and population growth forecasts for Australia and its major trading partners have been used to derive the forecasts. The forecasts imply that Australia's sea trade will double over the next 20 years, largely due to the continuing positive economic outlook for Australia and its major trading partners. The long-term outlook for the cruise shipping industry is also positive, largely due to the projected economic growth in source countries of cruise passengers, particularly the USA.

Report 140 presents the results of a BITRE review of the impacts of road trauma. This review evaluated different road safety approaches, both internationally and domestically, and provided a timely stock take of ways that road safety experts believe deaths and serious injuries on our roads can be reduced.

Internationally, the annual number of road deaths fell nearly 40 per cent between 2000 and 2012. However, there has been limited success in saving lives among vulnerable road users, and the share of fatalities among elderly road users is slowly increasing in many countries.

In 2008, International Transport Forum and the Organisation for Economic Co-operation and Development published a research report Towards Zero: ambitious road safety targets and the Safe System approach, which was the first international effort in defining and promoting the adoption by all countries of a Safe System approach.

Australia was amongst the first to adopt a Safe System approach, which underpins the National Road Safety Strategy 2011–2020 (NRSS).

In Australia significant progress has been made towards the NRSS target of a 30 per cent reduction in casualties. While vehicle occupant deaths have trended down, the analysis confirms the relatively high risk for motorcyclists, pedal cyclists, older drivers and remote communities. This, combined with population increases, makes the search for new ways to further reduce road trauma even more challenging.

BITRE has focused on four priorities identified by road safety experts: infrastructure, intersections, distraction from mobile phones, and autonomous emergency braking. The report found:

• Roadside barriers, median barriers and rumble strips reduce road trauma. To maximise road safety benefits they need to be implemented taking account of road conditions.
• Lower speed limits can be a valuable option to help achieve improved road safety outcomes where low traffic volumes mean upgrades are not currently economically justified.
• Intersection treatments can be very effective, with roundabouts particularly effective–reducing casualty crashes by over 70 per cent.
• There is value in a comprehensive mobile phone strategy.
• Autonomous emergency braking will save lives as it is introduced to the vehicle fleet.

The Bureau is grateful for the help of road safety experts who participated in both the survey and workshop to identify new measures with the most potential to further reduce road trauma.

• Impact of road trauma and measures to improve outcomes
  
  report_140.pdf
  (1.47 MB)