Helping transport professionals fast track their success
Congestion is the dominant challenge in cities and infrastructure networks [1]
Putting the customer first is top priority for most transport agencies. This requires improving the quality of service to users by providing key infrastructure improvements, offering travel choices, managing as one network and providing integrated services.
A major challenge facing public transport professionals is identifying ongoing opportunities for the development of their knowledge and skills, and obtaining a recognised qualification.
Most professionals currently learn ‘on the job’, being mentored by more experienced professionals and gaining experience over time. Related qualifications in engineering, planning, technology and the sciences are the usual areas that public transport professionals come from.
So how do professionals develop their capability further?
What are potential next generation road system management innovations to address ever increasing demands on major urban road networks with more and more data becoming available?
Australian road owners and operators in major urban areas, both public and private, are facing ever increasing traffic volumes and more pervasive traffic congestion, constrained funding for new infrastructure, and political hesitancy in moving towards comprehensive road user charging.
If the trend towards road user charging continues then that relationship and providing quality customer service will require a significant change in focus for these agencies.
Highway agencies have limited opportunities for a direct relationship with their customers, the road users.
Two of the major challenges facing highway agencies into the next decade will be dealing with increasing traffic congestion, and securing funding for infrastructure and services – hence the growing interest in congestion charging.
Is congestion getting worse? Congestion used to mean that it took longer to get to and from work in the ‘peak hour’. Now congestion affects more trips, extending to more hours of the day, creates even more extra travel time, extends across more of the road network and results in reduced reliability of travel.
How should we deal with traffic incidents at critical times and locations, which cause major, unexpected problems for users?
Operators of road traffic networks are under increasing pressure to maintain acceptable levels of service, with declining resources and competing priorities. Urban traffic networks are not able to keep pace with the growth in travel, as a result major roads operate at maximum capacity for extended periods.
The prime reason governments intervene in the transport policy domain is often stated at deriving from some form of “market failure”.
That is to say, if things were left to individual firms and persons in our society, a sub-optimal, or more likely unacceptable situation would arise.
Why is understanding the linkages between land use and transport so important for transport and planning professionals?
Transport is a primarily a derived demand, we travel in order to get to a destination, to undertake an activity and to carry goods. Land use is a key determinant of the need, when, how, and where to travel.
So learning how to influence land use and develop integrated transport plans means you will become one of the critical few transport and planning professionals who have this knowledge and know what an be done.
Transport professionals need to find innovative ways to deliver transport projects in the face of demands for do more for less.
These challenges have resulted from:
How can we think differently about how to resource transport programs?
