Collette Burke joins Australian Road Research Board (ARRB)
The Australian Road Research Board (ARRB) has announced the high-profile appointment of Victoria’s first Chief Engineer, Dr Collette Burke, to work with the organisation.
Dr Burke will use her vast experience and influence to re-engineer our future vision and strategy to ensure alignment with our stakeholders and the unprecedented demand for innovation in assets.
Based in our Melbourne head office, Dr Burke will be part of our Road Asset Performance team, which specialises in asset management, data collection and analysis, and infrastructure measurement.
ARRB is focussed on the development of new knowledge in this area to provide guidance for the public and private sector on next generation asset management and better value for money economic outcomes.
Dr Burke spent two and a half years as Victoria’s Chief Engineer and brings extensive and diverse experience to ARRB – the National Transport Research Organisation.
But she says her passion for asset management, and the type of work she had been doing in her role as Victoria’s Chief Engineer, made ARRB a perfect fit for the next career challenge.
“My early career was a lot in building roads, bridges and tunnels, and I have particular experience in looking where roads failed,” Dr Burke said.
“In recent years as Chief Engineer, I looked at raising the profile of asset management in government, and what was needed for whole-of-life asset management. I’m particularly interested in technology – digital engineering, sensors in bridges, pavement predictive technology such as ARRB’s iPAVE and iSSAVe.
“I have a deep interest in trying to see if we could make a bigger impact on industry for better decision-making on our assets, and looking how we maintain them.”
Chief Executive of ARRB Michael Caltabiano said: ”The appointment of Dr Collette Burke to this role will indeed allow our organisation to work closely with transport agencies across Australia and New Zealand and the private sector to shape our transport future”.
“Our journey as an organisation is to reimagine the transport journey and embed the opportunities that integrated mobility options bring to our community.
“Collette has many years of exceptional experience, that when combined with some of the brightest minds in the transport sector at ARRB, will enable us to deliver more great outcomes for our road and transport communities across Australia.”
Dr Burke’s role will be a strategic one - helping highlight ARRB’s work and the benefits of infrastructure measurement and data analysis, to government and the private sector.
“As Victoria’s Chief Engineer, I was able to work on some amazing projects and a lot of that work is very well aligned work to what ARRB’s been doing, so I’m hoping ARRB is going to drive new knowledge in these areas to deliver some great outcomes,” Dr Burke said.
“ARRB’s a fantastic environment, incredible labs, a really friendly working place. I think ARRB have been the quiet achievers in the infrastructure sector. They’ve been doing fantastic work.
“Already I’ve had some great conversations with people in the office, but I also have a great network outside. So the aim is to strengthen and create those networks between ARRB, industry and government.
“That’s one of my strengths, and there’s really good opportunities to do that.”
Find out more about ARRB's Asset Management capabilities here
View ARRB's latest news here: https://www.arrb.com.au/news
EU Mobility Observatory Survey 2020: How has COVID-19 affected Mobility in Europe?
The results of the latest survey carried out by the EU Mobility Observatory* show that Europeans increasingly relied on private cars for daily travel and longer trips in 2020.
The FIA European Bureau’s annual survey set out to explore changes in people’s mobility habits that have occurred in response to the COVID-19 pandemic and the various restrictions applied by European governments. Respondents from seven countries provided information about their mobility behaviour in 2020, which was compared to data from 2019.
The EU Mobility Observatory’s 2020 survey was carried out by eight mobility clubs that are all members of FIA Region I: ACA (France), ACI (Italy), ACP (Portugal), AL (Finland), MAK (Hungary), RACC (Spain), RACE (Spain) and TCS (Switzerland). Around 30 000 individuals participated in the survey by providing responses to a set of common questions. The interviews were conducted between September and December 2020.
The survey’s key findings show that the private car remained the preferred means of transport for both daily commuting and longer journeys:
- Europeans’ reliance on private mobility increased in 2020 with 74% of the survey respondents declaring that they used a car for their daily commute in 2020 – up from 69% in 2019.
- About 40% of respondents did not go on summer holidays in 2020, against 20% in 2019. Of those who did go on holiday, 84% travelled by car – compared to 66% in 2019. Only 2% of those who went on holiday chose a non-neighbouring country or a different continent as their destination in 2020, against 18% in 2019.
Laurianne Krid, FIA Region I’s Director-General, commented: “The COVID pandemic had a significant impact on people’s daily mobility and tourism choices. Nevertheless, the private car not only kept but consolidated its role as the preferred means of transport for both short and long distances.”
“While cars remain crucial for meeting people’s mobility needs,” she continued, “there are several ways that policy-makers can mitigate the impacts of road transport without restricting citizens’ mobility. These include:
- Helping consumers to choose more efficient and less polluting cars, for example by promoting the Green NCAP ratings; and
- Providing quality information that will allow citizens to combine different modes in an optimal way, such as by promoting Mobility as a Service (MaaS) schemes.”
* The EU Mobility Observatory is a joint initiative developed by FIA Region I and its members in order to carry out coordinated multi-national surveys on strategic mobility issues. Previous surveys have focused on advanced safety vehicle technologies (2018), data privacy issues (2019) and the use of smartphone apps to facilitate urban mobility (2020).
View the latest news of FIA Region I here: https://www.fiaregion1.com/fia/news/
IBI Group to Lead Consortium on the Delivery of Hyderabad Adaptive Traffic Control System
Global design and technology firm, IBI Group (TSX: IBG), in partnership with Gupta Power Infrastructure Ltd. and Envoys Electronics Pvt. Ltd., has been awarded the tender for implementation of a Unified Adaptive Traffic Signal Control (ATSC) system in the City of Hyderabad, India. The firm will lead the consortium on its largest urban signaling system contract, which includes the design, installation, testing, and commissioning of the ATSC across 480+ intersections, along with their operations and maintenance for a period of three years. The project leverages the traffic management module of IBI’s Smart City Platform. While the win serves to cement IBI’s technology leadership in the region, it will also ensure reduced congestion and carbon emissions, and improved traffic management and safety on roadways across the three Commissionerates of Hyderabad, Cyberabad and Rachakonda.
“IBI Group has been engaging in strategic partnerships in India, with the aim of achieving sustainable growth across our technology-based urban solution portfolio. We’re proud to be associated with this project and to support the Hyderabad City Administration in its efforts to provide citizens with reliable travel times, reduced accidents, and improved air quality,” said IBI Group’s Global Director of Innovation, Deepak Darda.
Since 2019, IBI Group has provided enduring analytical and operational support in managing traffic congestion, violation enforcement, and incident response to Hyderabad’s Traffic Police, through its Integrated Traffic Management System (ITMS) solution. Throughout the pandemic, IBI’s ITMS solution further enabled City authorities to effectively enforce lockdown regulations, and proactively engage with citizens. Through the commissioning of the ATSC system, and its integration with the City’s existing ITMS solution, road users will receive a more reliable, safe and efficient travel experience, while ensuring compliance with traffic rules and regulations.
For more information on this project and/or to speak with an IBI Group professional, please contact Julia Harper at Julia.harper@ibigroup.com or 1-647-330-4706.
Explore IBI Group’s latest news here: https://www.ibigroup.com/
On-demand corporate mobility: are you ready to share your trip with a coworker?
One year ago now uncertainty spread all over with sudden, forced lockdowns, a flood of unsettling COVID-19 news, infection curves on the rise, and the pandemic evolution raging all through the globe. Mobility is one of the most impacted areas by this global crisis, where serious concerns having been raised such as: what will happen with plummeted use of public transport, and the worrying trend of consumers back to private cars? Will shared mobility keep growing, or it will stall? What are the challenges for urban mobility as we realise what it takes to adapt to the post-pandemic world?
In this context, the CommINSAFE project –an acronym standing for CommutINg with ShAred mobility covid-FrEe- was submitted to a timely initiative of the EIT Urban Mobility as they decided to (re)act, and so make nearly €5 million funding available to support the most innovative ideas as part of the global response to the COVID-19 pandemic. CommINSAFE was one of the eleven selected projects in the Call For Proposals among close to 100 proposals that were submitted involving 317 organisations from 30 different countries. As the project has now come to an end after six months, the results are really promising.
The challenge we have addressed: European countries are facing a severe decrease in the use of public transport, with concerns as to the ability to keep physical distance and ride safely, while at the same time private car usage remains high. With the goal to boost shared mobility combined with public transport, a consortium composed of CERTH, FACTUAL, Sant Cugat City Council, Groupito, KTH and Taxiway started to work on a project proposal focused on how we could restore users’ trust in public transport in a pandemic context.
So we decided to focus our Unique Value Proposition (UVP) on commuters, especially those whose jobs do not allow them to telecommute, and so we came up with the idea of offering a mobility service to enable ride-sharing with trusted co-workers who commute to high-density business areas. Indeed, there is an increasing need for safe commuting to workplaces that concentrate many employees, especially to destinations where the available public transport connections are insufficient, or users do not feel confident to use them anymore. This is quite the case of Barcelona and its metropolitan area: the city has 1.6M inhabitants, but its metropolitan area accounts for an additional 1.7M dwellers from 36 municipalities. There are several industrial and business parks dispersed around the Barcelona metropolitan area, within a radius of 20 km from the city centre, and where few mass transit options are available. This situation results in a high share of private vehicles for commuting trips, and with very low occupancy rates.
This dependency on private vehicles for reaching industrial zones or business parks located in an interurban area is the root of many problems for the companies:
- Office space: this is related to the need to use (or we should rather say waste) a significant space for parking in their headquarters that could be better used for other purposes.
- Talent retention: this is related to the challenge to attract and retain talent linked with inconveniences related to the need to commute to the workplace, where time spent on road congestion and the cost of car use are real stoppers for many employees.
So we were faced with the challenge to react quickly to the spotted need, and within a very short time organise and deploy a corporate mobility service just before the arrival of the second COVID-19 wave.
The solution we have developed, and successfully piloted: we often state that there is no “one-size-fits-all” solution to address every mobility challenge. We decided in the CommINSAFE project to tackle current issues related to daily commuting in metropolitan areas by placing the user at the centre of our proposed solution, and include an innovative, cost-effective COVID-free solution to raise acceptance and trust in a novel, on-demand corporate mobility service based on a technological platform that allows employees working at different companies based in the same business area to book a virtual seat in the more convenient pick-up point and timetable to suit their daily journey to their workplace.
Our proposal combined the efficiency and flexibility of an on-demand mobility service, which was tailored to corporate mobility requirements, in close cooperation with a few companies that helped us recruit users among their employees. The piloted service has great potential for scaling, as commuter trips account for more than 60% of the overall mobility in metropolitan areas such as Greater Barcelona. These are its main components and features:
- On-demand: the Ne-Mi application for providing and managing a flexible transport service which includes virtual pick-up points in tailored and flexible routes that connect dense urban areas (where employees live) with the employee’s workplace.
Full article is available on FACTUAL's website here: https://factualconsulting.medium.com/on-demand-corporate-mobility-are-you-ready-to-share-your-trip-with-a-yet-to-know-co-worker-266d30434506
Road Fund Administration of Namibia’s Chief Executive Officer, Mr Ali Ipinge, elected as President of ARMFA
The Chief Executive Officer of the Road Fund Administration (RFA), Mr Ali Ipinge, was recently elected as the President of the African Roads Maintenance Fund Association (ARMFA), to serve for a two-year period, in line with the Statutes of ARMFA.
Mr Ipinge took over the reign from Mr Souleyname Traore, the Managing Director of the Road Maintenance Fund of Guinea, at a ceremonial event held on 12 January 2021 in Conakry, Guinea. Prior to this appointment, Mr Ipinge held the position of ARMFA 2nd Vice President since 23 February 2018.
ARMFA is a 34 member, non-political and non-profit continental body established in Libreville in 2003 as a platform and network for sharing experience, knowledge and information on best practices of financing road maintenance in Africa; supporting the promotion and strengthening of ties between African Roads Funds; and ensuring the sustainability and advocacy with governments and road sector institutions towards adequate financing of road maintenance.
Read More: www.rfanam.com.na/armfa-president/
The Ten Step Plan for Safer Road Infrastructure kicks off in Tanzania
The Tanzania Minister for Works and Transport, H.E. Eng. Dr Leonard Madaraka Chamuriho, has officially launched the “Ten Step Plan for Safer Road Infrastructure” project in an on-line National workshop that brings around the table key national and international agencies and organisations for the next three days.
Tanzania is the first country in the world to use the United Nations Road Safety Collaboration (UNRSC) Ten Steps approach.
The Ten Step Project, jointly funded by the United Nations Road Safety Fund (UNRSF) and the Global Road Safety Facility of the World Bank (GRSF), brings together the Government of Tanzania through the Ministry of Works, TANROADS and TARURA, the United Nations Economic Commission for Africa (UNECA), World Bank, International Road Federation (IRF), World Road Association (PIARC), International Road Assessment Program (iRAP), Tanzania Road Federation (TARA), research institutions, NGOs and industry stakeholders.
The workshop, which will run across three days, focuses on broad sharing of information and detailed activity planning.
“Through the Ten Step Plan for Safer Road Infrastructure Pilot Project, Tanzania is heading in the right direction to meet the objectives of the Second Decade of Action for Road Safety as well as Africa’s post-2020 Road Safety Strategy and its accompanying Action Plan. ECA is therefore committed to ensuring the successful implementation of the project” said Robert Lisinge, Chief of Infrastructure and Services Section of UN-Economic Commission for Africa (UNECA) in his keynote address.
“The Government of The United Republic of Tanzania appreciates the decision to implement the pilot project in our country and promises to be fully involved in its implementation in order to realize the target of safer road infrastructure for all road users” said Minister Leonard Madaraka Chamuriho in his opening remarks.
“The sector has proven that it has the tools to design and build safer roads, but these must be more widely implemented. This is not about telling a government or anyone else what to do. This is about making meaningful decisions that will save millions of lives” commented Susanna Zammataro, Director General at the International Road Federation (IRF), which leads the consortium of partners delivering the pilot in Tanzania.
Rob McInerney, CEO of the International Road Assessment Programme (iRAP) commented “With the Minister’s leadership we are at the start of a very exciting time for Tanzania. As the world-first application of the Ten Step Plan for Safer Road Infrastructure, Tanzania are already world leaders. We look forward to collaborating with local and international partners to achieve great things in Tanzania, and providing a benchmark for other countries in the region to learn from and emulate.”
The Ten Step Plan framework has been produced by the United Nations Road Safety Collaboration partners (UNRSC) to support countries seeking to implement initiatives in relation to the “Improved safety of road infrastructure and broader transport networks”, the UN Convention on Road Traffic and Road Signs and Signals and the achievement of UN Member States Agreed Global Targets 3 and 4 for safer new and existing roads.
More information : https://irfofficial.org/event/unrsc-webinar-the-ten-step-plan-for-safer-road-infrastructure/
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New Release: Connected and Autonomous Mobility Manifesto
The International Road Federation (IRF) is pleased to announce the launch of the Connected and Autonomous Mobility Manifesto. This document's main objective is to provide the basis for discussion to proactively prepare ourselves for the mobility revolution that Connected and Autonomous Vehicles (CAV) bring to the mobility and transport sector.
The Manifesto summarises the initial discussions about the main challenges of the main workstreams guiding the IRF Connected and Autonomous Mobility Committee (CAMC) work: Regulatory framework, Future work and social needs, and Technological innovations.
Global Coalition Calls for Policy Making to Enable Data Sharing for Sustainable Mobility
The Sustainable Mobility for All Initiative (SuM4All), World Business Council for Sustainable Development (WBCSD), and the International Road Federation (IRF) have launched a new report that draws attention to the need for policy guidance for data sharing between public and private sector stakeholders in the transportation sector.
The report, Sustainable Mobility: Policy Making for Data Sharing, which was released today as part of the new GRA in Action series, outlines a comprehensive policy framework with actionable guidance to support the adoption of data sharing to achieve sustainable urban mobility.
The increasing digitalization of mobility presents an opportunity to accelerate the transition toward sustainable urban mobility. Governments and businesses alike are using mobility data for innovative uses. Many disruptive mobility businesses, including those modeled on the shared economy, telematics, and autonomous driving capabilities, are all built on the backbone of static and dynamic data collection and processing abilities. Similarly, governments use data to understand and monitor transportation systems and plan infrastructure to meet future needs. While raw data alone are not enough, data sharing can help generate actionable insights, which are necessary to achieve sustainable mobility goals, generate economic value, and improve transportation experiences.
“Sharing of data across multiple sources is essential for decarbonizing our transportation systems and making mobility safer, more efficient, and accessible. Policy making for data sharing will help create harmonized, secure, privacy-centric, and ethical data-sharing ecosystems,” said Thomas Deloison, Director, Mobility, WBCSD.
An analysis of practices around the world shows that there is an urgent need for greater policy coherence in data sharing ecosystems, and governments need to adopt a harmonized and collaborative approach toward policy making for data sharing. “This report addresses the existing policy gap around mobility data-sharing,” said Susanna Zammataro, Director General, IRF. “A sound global policy framework is vital to harness technological advances and to avoid siloed approaches that could hamper rather than support the development of a mobility that is sustainable for all.”
“For Sustainable Mobility for All (SuM4All), data and evidence are essential to diagnose mobility issues and prioritize policy action. Until recently, much of the conversation on transport has been driven by anecdotes or ad hoc assessments. With the vast amount of data newly generated by the private sector, the right policy framework in place to enable data-sharing between public and private actors, and artificial intelligence to process that information, we can now bring a higher level of objectivity and precision in diagnosing issues in countries and guiding policy choices” said Dr. Nancy Vandycke, Program Manager, SuM4All.
Adding, “As a coalition of more than 50 organizations from the public and the private sectors, SuM4All will continue to harness technical expertise from its Members to think beyond existing paradigms, offer new insights, and support countries in their efforts to achieve sustainable mobility, including their climate targets.”
The policy framework presented in the report is built on exemplary practices from existing policies and data-sharing initiatives. It embodies the principles presented in the foundational WBCSD report Emerging Data Principles. The framework offers 33 policy suggestions that can be tailored and adapted by policymakers to suit their local mobility system and priority use cases. Ten global case studies annexed to the report illustrate how the policy framework can be applied practically and how the policy suggestions complement each other regardless of economic development level.
As part of the next plan of action, WBCSD and IRF, in collaboration with the SuM4All initiative, will be working on a series of demonstration projects on data sharing applications in different geographies. Champions in governments and the private sector are invited to support this effort to collaborate on these demonstration projects to scale data sharing for sustainable mobility globally.
NOTE TO EDITORS:
“The Sustainable Mobility: Policy Making for Data Sharing” contains actionable policy guidelines, and builds on World Business Council for Sustainable Development (WBCSD) Transforming Urban Mobility Project’s work on Enabling Data Sharing: Emerging Principles for Transforming Urban Mobility and unpacks the GRA’s policy measures on data-sharing platforms. This report offers 6 key recommendations as a call to action for policy makers and categorizes the 33 policy suggestions into 5 areas of policy interventions based on 10 global case studies.
The report authorship is led by the World Business Council for Sustainable Development’s (WBCSD) Transforming Urban Mobility Project and the International Road Federation (IRF), under the umbrella of the Sustainable Mobility For All initiative (SuM4All).
The report is accessible on SuM4All website: https://www.sum4all.org/publications/gra-action-series
Our experts are available for interviews. For more information, please contact:
ABOUT US
Sustainable Mobility for All (SuM4All) is the premier advocacy platform for international cooperation on transport and mobility issues. It brings together 55 public organizations and private companies, including bilateral partners, multilateral development banks, U.N. organizations, intergovernmental organizations, and civil society with a shared ambition to transform the future of mobility. It is an innovative model for action in transport that leverages the knowledge, expertise, and influence of its Member organizations to assist countries worldwide in their ambition to attain universal access, efficiency, safety and green mobility.
www.sum4all.org
WBCSD is a global, CEO-led organization of over 200 leading businesses working together to accelerate the transition to a sustainable world. We help make our member companies more successful and sustainable by focusing on the maximum positive impact for shareholders, the environment and societies. Our member companies come from all business sectors and all major economies, representing a combined revenue of more than USD $8.5 trillion and 19 million employees. Our global network of almost 70 national business councils gives our members unparalleled reach across the globe. Since 1995, WBCSD has been uniquely positioned to work with member companies along and across value chains to deliver impactful business solutions to the most challenging sustainability issues. Together, we are the leading voice of business for sustainability: united by our vision of a world where more than 9 billion people are all living well and within the boundaries of our planet, by 2050.
www.wbcsd.org
The International Road Federation (IRF) is a global, independent, not-for-profit organisation with headquarters in Geneva, Switzerland. Active since 1948, IRF is a membership-based organisation, representing leading corporate and institutional players drawn from the road and mobility sectors worldwide. Its mission is to promote the development of roads and road networks that enable access and sustainable mobility for all. Its approach is centred on key strategic components of knowledge transfer & information sharing, connecting people, businesses and organisations, and working on policy & advocacy.
www.irfnet.ch
IRF launches new Knowledge repository on COVID-19 and Transport
A new, comprehensive knowledge resource centre on COVID-19 and Transport was launched yesterday by the International Road Federation (IRF) thanks to a grant from the COVID-19 Response & Recovery Transport Research Fund (2020) managed by the High Volume Transport Applied Research Programme (HVT). The new repository is hosted in the Global Transport Knowledge Partnership (gTKP) portal and has as objective to fast-track access – especially for low-income countries - to knowledge, experience, learning resources and good practices on COVID-19 & Transport.
“While addressing the emergency that COVID-19 has created, this transformation of the gTKP portal will also allow to support efforts for a transformative transport agenda post-COVID by ensuring that access to knowledge created within other relevant programmes and initiatives (ReCAP, HVT and UNRSC) is made effectively accessible and used to inform decisions that will shape the recovery” said Susanna Zammataro, IRF Director General, while presenting the repository at a dedicated webinar hosted by IRF yesterday, 4th March.
“COVID-19 has exposed many critical areas of required research such as transport-related emission and clean air modelling, infection control on transport systems, transport demand post-Covid-19, food security and resilience of transport systems etc. This is an opportunity to work even closer together as a global network with a common vision of enabling sustainable mobility for all” commented Bernard Obika, High Volume Transport Team Leader.
The gTKP portal features a wealth of case studies, research papers, publications, reports, presentations and more, all organised around 5 key sections: COVID-19, High Volume Transport, Road Safety, Rural Roads, gTKP archives. It functions as a free on-line library and a gate to access other relevant knowledge repositories and resources. Users and other organisations are actively encouraged to enhance both the dynamism and interactivity of the portal by contributing their own knowledge and experience in the form of new reports, articles, case studies, research papers, publications, and more.
“While we move forward in this journey, we welcome ongoing comments and suggestions as to how we can continue to improve the content and outreach of the portal to meet evolving needs. More than this, we welcome the opportunity to work with many other organisations in the transport sector and beyond to make gTKP a joint effort and a shared platform” continued IRF Director General. “Sharing knowledge is key to progress in the transport sector. Together we can build a service that makes a decisive contribution to the achievement of this vital global objective » she concluded.
The COVID-19 repository is accessible on the Global Transport Knowledge Partnership website.
