This paper identifies two key implications of an increase in visitors using the roads to regional Australia: managing road infrastructure and visitor road safety. With over 800,000 kilometres of public road in this country costing over $7 billion to maintain and Queensland crash statistics indicating that over 60 percent of tourist crashes occur in country areas there are certainly serious issues facing regional dispersion of visitors. This paper looks at one tool currently being examined as a potential contributor to regional dispersion while maximising network efficiency and improving road safety. That is, tourism themed routes. These interactive visitor road corridors have demonstrated their ability to affect visitor dispersion but rely heavily on cross sector (tourism and transport) cooperation. This paper examines the potential contribution of tourism themed routes to 'win-win' tourism and transport outcomes, their application in the case example of Queensland and the need for greater national coordination to ensure the best is achieved through the implementation of tourism themed routes. (Author/publisher) For the covering entry of this conference, please see ITRD abstract no. E208431.
Samenvatting