Road authorities face numerous challenges in planning investment to most effectively address diverse community needs. Increasingly, ecological sustainability has raised the profile of transport system outcomes and investment is now influenced by multiple priorities including regional development, amenity of communities, social justice and employment. This paper explores how a goal achievement method (or GAM) has been applied to road network investment planning. The GAM process has been utilised within Queensland Main Roads to perform a system level road investment analysis for three specific categories of road. Application of the GAM allowed wider economic development and social justice issues to be considered in the development of a state wide approach to the evaluation, prioritisation of road network development across the state. GAM methodology enabled trade-offs to be made between competing objectives and thus allowed social, economic, and environmental outcome areas to appropriately influence investment decisions. Together with a simple linear programming tool that enabled the evaluation of high, medium and low road network visions, optimum twenty-year investment strategies for each link of the state-controlled road network were prepared. (a)
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