Deriving the greatest benefit from each dollar invested in land transport systems is a fundamental consideration for road controlling authorities world wide. Ensuring networks are reliable and durable are common key deliverables. Traditional means of measuring road network performance provide authorities with a picture of the physical condition of roads. Surveying features such as road roughness, rutting and skid resistance, is long-accepted as the basis for allocating limited funding for correction and maintenance of existing roads and expenditure on capital projects. For the government-owned authority there is also a growing pressure to be answerable to wishes of stakeholders and road users. While traditional performance measures continue to determine Transit New Zealand's (Transit's) work priorities, the desires of stakeholders and road users are increasingly determining the focus of the Crown road controlling authority's programme of works. Rather than being an onerous undertaking, Transit's experience of marrying service levels based on the desires of the New Zealand road user with priorities driven by physical condition, has proved to be a catalyst for innovation. Transit's initiatives to establish and measure the satisfaction of road users, uncovered a less desirable rating from a strategically important segment of road users. Commercial truck drivers were significantly less satisfied with state highways than the average road user. Transit's efforts to better understand the underlying reasons for this result led to the development of a new methodology for measuring truck drivers' experiences on the road. The Truck Ride Index is one example of an innovation that provides a pavement condition measure more attuned to identifying problem areas of highways for trucks. The pre-existing and internationally recognised standard measure for road roughness was limited to the experience of road condition from the perspective of a passenger travelling in a car. These measures overlook the longwave pavement and transverse warping variations, to which trucks are more susceptible. Supported by a governing and monitoring framework conducive to innovation, the index and other recent Transit initiatives are providing the tools to improve on identified deficiencies and deliver the service levels New Zealand road users desire. For the covering abstract see ITRD E135448.
Abstract