Fleet Ride Index to improve road management and freight efficiency
Peak road and traffic organisation Austroads has released a report that proposes a Fleet Ride Index (FRI) of roads for heavy vehicles to guide and improve road transport efficiency in Australia.
The report, Level of Service Requirements for Freight on Rural Roads and Refinement of Heavy Vehicle Roughness Band Index, calls for a heavy vehicle equivalent of the International Roughness Index (IRI) for cars.
It investigates the safety and comfort of drivers, including collecting driver seat vibration data, in a range of vehicles to develop a proof of concept for the heavy vehicle ride quality index.
Describing the report, Austroads says it aims to provide road asset managers with information to better manage road infrastructure for improved rural trade and freight transport efficiency.
NTC, Austroads release guidelines for automated vehicle trials. Read more, here
“The analysis of perceived safety indicated that the minimum design standards for lane and sealed shoulder width for class A, B and C roads confer an appropriate sense of safety for heavy vehicle drivers.
“The analysis of the subjective comfort data indicates that current maintenance intervention triggers are supported by subjective ratings of ride quality class A, B and C roads intended to serve as freight routes in Victoria.
“The vibration data was used to develop a proof-of-concept ride quality index for heavy vehicles that seeks to represent the range of responses experienced by different heavy vehicle configurations to the road profile.
“This index, the Fleet Ride Index (FRI), provides the ability to envelope either the entire heavy vehicle fleet, or a customised selection of the fleet for use in areas with differing characteristics of heavy vehicle use (i.e. smaller vehicles in urban areas).
“It can also produce a single value output similar to IRI and HATI [Heavy Articulated Vehicle Index] but can be weighted to represent the proportions of each heavy vehicle configuration in the fleet on that particular road type and/or location.
“This ability to customise the output should allow road managers a more powerful tool in the management of roads for freight vehicles.
“However, the collection and analysis of more vibration data would provide a more robust basis for the FRI.”
Austroads notes that the value of the road freight task in Australia in relation to gross domestic product (GDP) is the highest of all OECD countries, and Australia’s freight task is expected to increase exponentially in coming decades, hence it is increasingly important to understand the interaction between heavy vehicles and the roads they drive on.
More information about the report can be found here.