Company-X has enhanced the world’s first national transport quality assurance tool to help improve evidence-based decision making across the sector.
The Waikato software specialist has added a Traffic Count Estimation (TCE) module to Transport Insights.
Company-X designed and developed the TCE module for use by Waka Kotahi NZ Transport Agency, city, and district councils on behalf of client Te Ringa Maimoa Transport Excellence Partnership.
“The Transport Insights TCE module provides a more consistent way for councils to estimate the traffic volumes on their roads,” said Company-X business analyst Bryan Miles.
“These estimates are extremely important for planning what roading work needs to be done where and when.”
The module is based on the Traffic Monitoring Estimation Best Practice Guidelines published by the Institute of Public Works Engineers Australia NZ (IPWEA NZ) Roading Infrastructure Management Support (RIMS) special interest group.
Miles shared details of the module with the sector at the Roading Infrastructure Management Support (RIMS) Forum in Christchurch in March.
Traffic estimation feeds into various aspects of roading network management and planning. Estimating the traffic count across a roading network was challenging. Road Controlling Authorities (RCAs) used various manual, and thus labour intensive, error prone processes to estimate traffic counts. Handling thousands of rows of data in one spreadsheet means there is a much higher chance of putting the wrong value in a cell or copying the wrong formula to a cell.
The TCE module removes manual analysis, resulting in a more consistent result across the network.
“If I had to put an amount of time saved by using the tool, I would say it was in the two-to-three-month realm,” said Waka Kotahi NZ Transport Agency Road Asset Information Specialist Simon Chu.
“Taking the process away from a manual to a more automated process means there’s a much lower chance of errors.”
Te Ringa Maimoa, formerly the Road Efficiency Group, is a joint initiative between Local Government New Zealand and Waka Kotahi. It has partnered with Company-X since 2015.
