The Western Roads Upgrade project is one of Victoria’s largest ever roads upgrade. The $1.8 billion dollar upgrade will upgrade eight arterial roads within four years, and maintain of more than 260 kilometres of arterial road, spanning from Werribee to Footscray, for a further 20 years.

 

Client requirements 

The specific aims of this work were to:

Phase 1 – assess staging options of infrastructure upgrades

Phase 2 – provide demand forecasts to assist with cost estimation

 

Delivered outcome

VLC worked closely with the other members of the consortium in preparing traffic forecasts and developing key performance indicators that were used to evaluate and rank alternative staging options of infrastructure upgrades. This involved evaluating the network-wide transport benefits of each of the eight road projects individually and identifying their impacts on the remaining seven projects. From this analysis, alternative staging packages were proposed, and the transport model was used to identify which staging options performed best.

VLC also developed uncertainty margins around traffic forecasts for alternative scenarios. These traffic forecasts were used to assist with cost estimation for road maintenance and rehabilitation costs.