The social value of road networks in Queensland, Australia

This paper reports the results of the consultations between Main Roads Queensland and its external and internal stakeholders, in terms of features such as road user cost benefits, reliability, congestion, freight routes, safety, potential for regional development, social access, environmental issues, etc across rural and urban communities for all road sets. It describes the extent of the variation of the importance of the features of the road system to urban and rural communities for each road set. The importance of the features to external system users is also compared with the importance assigned by internal road system providers. It then describes the use of the strategic information in developing a Road Investment Strategy that will optimise investment in each road set. The theoretical process is supplemented by a process of moderation to ensure consistency of performance standards along road links. Although the methodology relies upon analysing a large amount of road system data at a strategic level, the most important aspect of the analysis is that it requires the user to follow a logical discipline of understanding community needs. Fundamentally, the road system is a means to an end rather than an end in itself.