Congestion

Explore road route information by distance and duration at different times of the day, on different days and in different months.
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Introduction

Are you interested in understanding which road routes are most congested at various times and days of the year? Do you need to investigate trends or variability in travel time along chosen routes? 

Data from trucks (telematics) provides time and location information at regular polling intervals, which allows us to measure changes in travel time on road segments and quantify congestion along key freight routes.

Date range: 1/01/2022 - 31/12/2022 

This visualisation displays Tasmania's Hobart to Burnie road corridor by default. To view congestion across the country, de-select the default corridor on the interactive's menu bar. 

Explore the data in more detail using the full visualisation.

About the data

This interactive visualisation showcases data sourced under the Bureau of Infrastructure and Transport Research Economics' (BITRE) vehicle telematics collection. Visit the data catalogue to access the underlying data.

Heavy vehicle speeds have been derived from telematics data to understand when periods of increased congestion occur on the Australian road network. Users can explore median speeds at each hour of the day, day of the week, or month of the year, to investigate trends in heavy vehicle traffic and congestion over selected road corridors across the country. 

Due to the small sample size, this visualisation is indicative and not yet suitable for decision-making. We are currently working to increase the sample size and reliability of this data. With a larger sample size, this type of visualisation could be used to identify patterns and trends to highlight routes that may be more congested than others. It could also improve understanding to inform investment planning, if industry participation grows and more trucks can be added to the sample. 

Limitations

  1. BITRE data of 5,000 heavy vehicles reporting monthly throughout 2022 were used to create this visualisation. We are currently working to expand our data collection to increase our confidence in this product. 
  2. Road segments displayed in this visualisation are sourced from OpenStreetMap data. Only road types of 'primary', 'primary_link', 'motorway', 'motorway_link', 'trunk' and 'trunk_link' are associated with the congestion statistics.
  3. The number of heavy vehicles in the telematics datasets are small compared to the total number on the road network and hence not necessarily representative of movements of the broader truck fleet. Despite this, measured truck speeds will generally provide reliable measures of broader traffic speeds experienced by network users across most network segments (with the notable exceptions of steeper gradient and/or tightly curved road segments). 
  4. The telematics data does not include information on the nature of the freight being moved and includes journeys made by trucks which may be empty as well as where trucks are being repositioned. 
  5. There are other ways to calculate congestion. For example, free-flow speeds could be set equal to the posted speed limit on each road segment. However, posted speed limits are not currently available digitally for all roads in Australia. 
  6. Some truck operators are interested in helping their customers understand the impact of congestion on their operations, and encourage greater use of freight transport services outside congested periods. This would assist with fleet optimisation, with trucks spending less time in congestion. Further consultation with industry will help refine the 'congestion measures'. 

Feedback

The NFDH is working to increase its partnership with industry to collect and include more varied truck telematics data. Please Contact the NFDH team If you are interested in being a part of our project, have any questions or suggestions for improving this interactive. All feedback is appreciated.