Main Roads WA Releases HV Route Assessment Toolkit

The Heavy Vehicle Services team within the Department of Main Roads Western Australia has released a suite of tools that will help road managers to conduct route assessments for Restricted Access Vehicles in Western Australia.

In developing the tools, the team worked with Australia’s National Transport Research Organisation (NTRO). The tools focus on assessing the capabilities of different RAV combinations in safety-related areas, and their impacts on road infrastructure.

Three separate tools are available that provide insights into: maximum gradeability for tandem and tri-drive vehicle combinations; road wear impacts using the Equivalent Standard Axles (ESA) method; and intersection clearance times and risk analysis.

Each tool allows the user to calculate the performance of a proposed vehicle and compare its results to an existing vehicle. This allows its impacts relative to a vehicle that already had road network access. The tools can be accessed on the MRWA website here.

The transport industry now has several publicly available online heavy vehicle safety and infrastructure tools at its disposal, with the MRWA tools now joining the following existing tools from regulators and industry:

• NHVR Freight Productivity and Safety/Sustainability (Freight PASS)
• NHVR Pavement Impact Comparison Calculator
• Advantia Payload Pilot Static Rollover Threshold Calculator