Te Ringa Maimoa Transport Excellence Partnership CASE STUDY: Traffic Count Estimation Module

New Zealand’s transport sector needed to better understand the current and changing traffic demand on the transport network. Good traffic data is essential in the evidence-based decision-making process. In 2023 Company-X added a Traffic Count Estimation (TCE) module to Transport Insights, the world’s first national transport sector evidence- based insights tool.

Te Ringa Maimoa Transport Excellence Partnership is a collaborative initiative between Local Government New Zealand, NZ Transport Agency Waka Kotahi and all road controlling authorities, targeting business-excellence across the transport sector. The partnership was formed in 2012 as the principal authority to implement the recommendations of the Road Maintenance Task Force.

Estimating traffic counts from thousands of rows of data within a national network on a single spreadsheet was a highly labour-intensive and error-prone task for Road Control Authorities (RCAs). When done right, asset managers are empowered to make decisions that optimize every infrastructure dollar spent. When done incorrectly, the effects are a misunderstanding of the traffic demand on the transport network and poor decisions. Transport Insights’ Traffic Count Estimation Module meant city and district councils, with NTZA, would discover efficiencies in cost, planning, and time to delivery.

Te Ringa Maimoa and Company-X designed and developed a set of Traffic Count Estimation tools which allow seasonally adjusted average annual daily traffic estimates to be calculated from traffic count data.

The TCE 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.

Through the Traffic Count Estimation Module, RCAs can now run traffic count estimates at the touch of a button, removing months of manual work and significantly reducing the chance of error.

“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. Taking the process away from a manual to a more automated process means there’s a much lower chance of errors.”

Simon Chu

Road Asset Information Specialist

Waka Kotahi NZ Transport Agency