Traffic Engineering - March 2019
The Tennis Ball Intersection and other complex road designs
The ABC has run a story, with videos, on some on the new roads being built in Western Australia.
Perhaps the most interesting aspect from a Traffic Engineering is at the intersection of Berkshire Road in Forrestfield with the Roe Highway; commonly called the Tennis Ball design.
An academic reflects on traffic management
Roger Dunn has been an associate professor in the Department of Civil and Environmental Engineering at the University of Auckland and is a fellow and life member of the Institution of Transportation Engineers (ITE). Prior to joining the University of Auckland in 1972 Roger worked for the New Zealand Ministry of Works and development in Palmerston North and Wellington and then Freeman Fox Wilbur Smith and Associates in London and Paris.
We recently recorded a chat with him. The full interview can be heard at
https://soundcloud.com/user-639145150/interview-with-roger-dunn-assoc-prof-dept-of-civil-and-environmental-engineering-at-the-uni-of-auckland.
Some of his comments in relation to planning, traffic engineering, management and maintenance are revealing.
In regard to land-use/transport planning he said:
We have a lot of committees and political suggestions and committees that are making plans for land use and transport and I'm not quite sure whether that is leading to better efficiency to better plans and better design because you tend to find that the loudest voice gets the greater say. And that might be good and it may not be.
Data
I think we're getting a lot better data and I think you're aware, as I am, of Austraffic’s, John Reid's presentations that he's made recently about big data and I think we're learning a lot more about it. But I think the weakness is we don't know what we don't know.
Whilst we are improving, the analytical side and we're understanding more, I think there's two things there we don't know what we don't know and secondly too is we don't know what factors or influences there will be for the future. I mean I come back to mobile phones again. It's been a fantastic change in society and the way that we do a lot of things and it's all down to that technology.
Maintenance
Just travelling around in the last few weeks I've just now just a lot of the maintenance on our roads is not being done because we used to have people who used to do nothing else but look at the maintenance. Now we have contracts. So whilst it might be more efficient in terms of finance as well as in manpower it's not getting the job done and in the same way.
And I think that with the climate changes that are taking place we're going to have a lot more floods and people realize that. Certainly, as a New Zealander, we're thinking about it and at the university level, but I don't know whether the government and local government levels are thinking about it about the amount of stormwater that needs to be run from the various land uses that we have.
Sign recognition and autonomous vehicles
Since the major article about sign recognition and autonomous vehicles in the previous newsletter, a number of comments have been received:
Austroads report
Austroads have a report titled “Implications of Traffic Sign Recognition (TSR) Systems for Road Operators”
Traffic Sign Recognition (TSR) is an in-vehicle technology which attempts to read and interpret roadside traffic signs. Vehicle manufacturers are moving towards enabling speed assistance and automated driving using TSR systems and the benefits of successful introduction are likely to be significant for road safety. The Austroads report investigates the potential changes needed to Australian and New Zealand traffic signs to consistently support and optimise the outcomes from the introduction of TSR systems.
Flickering effects of VMS
Variable message signs have a flickering effect so how does this affect a car trying to read the sign.
Graeme Pattison says “I don't see multiplexing of VMS as a real problem as the cameras can overcome blacked out sections by just taking another frame a few milliseconds later. VMS flicker (>60hz) because there is not yet a spec requirement for multiplexing speed”.
A clear sign but a confusing message
Even if the sign is accurate to the standards, it can still be confusing.
Here is a “No entry” sign that is clearly visible to traffic on the main road. But it may not be clear to a vehicle that it applies to the side street.
