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Case Study

Identifying contraflow during temporary road work

How to use connected vehicle data to identify contraflow and understand the effects of construction sites on driver behaviour.

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TfNSW’s pavement team for Regional and Outer Metro (ROM) wanted to understand the impact of contraflow on the Hume Highway in both directions. Traffic was being redirected to let workers replace a section of the road.

The client was interested in:

  • Travel time
  • Speeds
  • Swerving
  • Braking
  • Queue lengths

They also wanted four questions answered:

  • Is the traffic management plan being adhered to?
  • Are workers safe at the construction site?
  • How long is the queue at either end of the contraflow?
  • What is the difference in speed under normal circumstances and during contraflow conditions?

Using the Road Intelligence platform, the visuals instantly show vehicles changing lanes where the construction starts and then back to their original lane where construction zone ends. The data also showed the impacts on average travel time, speed, and queueing.

  • Average travel time increased
  • Average speed decreased and
  • The queueing increased to 31.23%.
This table shows the average speeds between teh 25-19th of October. Average speeds were between 77-79 km/h but dropped to 50.4 km/h when construction started.
Decrease in average speed from 77-79 km/h to 50km/h when contraflow was introduced.
This table showed how many vehicles were queueing as a percentage and their average travel time. This was between 25-29 October where construction started on the 29th where 31.35% of vehicles were queuing. Almost 30% increase from the time when there was no construction. Average travel times also doubled during construction. The travel times ranged between 120-123 seconds before construction and was 256 seconds on the 29th.
Percentage queuing and average travel time increased when the contraflow was introduced.

Data also showed the contraflow had a clear impact during the times it was active (i.e. 11am-7pm).

This graph shows the impact of northbound and southbound traffic at the contraflow. Impact was determined by the average time. The average travel time increased in both directions mostly between the hours of 12-7pm.
Graph showing the impact of the contraflow on average travel time. Average travel time increased dramatically during times that the contraflow is active.
This graph uses the average speed to identify impacts of the contraflow. Similar to the graph above, this graph shows a decrease in speeds between the hours of 10am - 6pm as a result of the construction.
Graph showing the impact of the contraflow on average speed. Average speed decreased during times that the contraflow is active.
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Top view of the studied area in Osborne Park, Western Australia.

Identifying contraflow during temporary road work

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Contraflow on the Hume Highway through the Road Intelligence Platform.

Conducting a speed study

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A heat map of speeding behaviour in the Inner West Council

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