Profiles and case studies

Drivers travelling through Melbourne’s north eastern suburbs of Heidelberg, Eaglemont, Ivanhoe, Alphington, Fairfield, Northcote and Preston are getting a better run of traffic lights, improved travel times and safer, more efficient pedestrian crossings thanks to Smarter Roads.

Two years on from its opening, specialist traffic engineers have given the Mordialloc Fwy a clean bill of health as they work behind the scenes fine-tuning traffic signals and ensuring drivers enjoy smooth journeys.

Traffic Signal Engineers addressed a traffic bottleneck at the intersection of Wantirna road and Station street in Ringwood.

The Department of Transport and Planning’s Real Time Signal Operations (RTSO) team will be managing congestion on the roads surrounding the Grand Slam.

Monitoring congestion and modifying traffic lights in real time will help Melburnians navigate the Boxing Day commotion as they hunt down a bargain or head to the ‘G for the first day of the Test.

When a major road doubles as a busy shopping strip – like Clayton Road, Clayton – can pedestrians be given more opportunities to cross without disrupting peak hour traffic? Smarter Roads signals engineers have reduced the wait time for pedestrians by as much as half, while also making traffic flow smoother for motorists during peak hour.

As vehicles numbers on Clyde Rd have grown, the Smarter Roads Signals Engineers have revised traffic light sequencing to support smoother journeys along the major road.

A third of Melbourne’s breakfast radio audience is familiar with the reassuring voice of the Department of Transport and Planning’s Brad Arnoldt, yet most wouldn’t know how his regular traffic reports are compiled and effortlessly delivered each day.

Motorists travelling down Springvale Road in Glen Waverley sure won’t miss our new Live Travel Signs, they’re the biggest to ever be installed on a main road in Australia!

A major reduction in traffic queues and improved links between traffic signals has been delivered on two major roads in Melbourne’s south east, helping to ease congestion and make journeys smoother.

For the very first time on Australian roads, Transurban has conducted a trial of a self-driving truck and our Smarter Roads program had a special role to play!

Dynamic Pedestrian Detectors use high-definition technology that identifies the size of pedestrian groups waiting to cross a road and adapts crossing time accordingly, making your walk safer and smoother.

No two days are the same for our Incident Response Service which has been boosted by the Smarter Roads Program. Here, Senior Incident Response Officer Mark Pesavento provides an insight into what a recent day looked like for him.

Traffic signal design engineers like Noel and David play a key role in designing intersections to operate smoothly and safely. They also set the stage for adaptable, real time signal changes to be made, if needed, to tackle congestion.

Meet the people at the Department of Transport and Planning’s Smarter Roads team who are working to keep people and goods moving across Melbourne.  Haifeng started his career as a VicRoads graduate engineer 14 years ago and hasn’t looked back. After working mainly in traffic operations, project development and network integration, Haifeng is now an Area Manager in the Smarter Roads’ Congestion Management Team.

Ever been stuck in traffic because you missed your chance to take a faster route to your destination?  Well, now thanks to our new Live Travel Signs, you can make the best route choice when travelling. But how does it all work?

We’ve rolled out transport technology across Melbourne’s west, east and south-east to help keep traffic moving. To explain how this technology works, we’ve enlisted the help of ‘Trent the Traffic Light’.

As part of the biggest review of traffic lights in Melbourne’s history, we’ve recalibrated the signals at key intersections along High Street / High Street Road between Glen Iris Road and Huntingdale Road.

The smell of burning rubber, high adrenalin, and the thrill of F1 supercars whizzing by …. these will all be part of a day’s work for Luke Ryan at the Grand Prix on Sunday. But it’s not as you’d expect.

Meet the people at Smarter Roads who are working to keep people and goods moving across Melbourne. Purbaj is a civil engineer who used to work for an NBN delivery partner which rolled out kilometres of fibre to help Victorians stay connected to the world wide web. Now, as part of the Smarter Roads Program, he’s rolling out new live-feed CCTV cameras on our roads.

We rely on buses when train services are interrupted by major railway projects such as level crossing removals and rail duplication works. So it’s good to know there’s a team working behind the scenes to give these replacement buses more priority at traffic lights, particularly during peak periods.

Motorists and pedestrians are already seeing the benefits of a traffic light review of Boundary/Wells Road, with improved traffic flow along the 10-kilometre stretch between Clayton South and Chelsea Heights.

Six-year-old Isaac sent a letter to the Roads Minister asking if someone could investigate a set of traffic lights on Plenty Road in Bundoora - because they were sometimes making him late for school.

Hundreds of thousands of motorists will be better informed about travel times and disruptions each week following the installation of 12 giant electronic signs across some of our busiest arterial roads.

We’ve recalibrated traffic lights at key intersections along Springvale Road, Glen Waverley, delivering motorists significant journey time savings in morning and afternoon peaks.

Our Transport Operations Centre now has improved visibility of the busiest roads in Werribee thanks to the addition of 20 new traffic monitoring cameras and eight new travel time sensors.

As part of the Smarter Roads Program, the Department of Transport has committed to understanding the potential environmental and human impacts from the transport network – and with the introduction of these Traffic Monitoring Pods for the first time is able to monitor and report on these effects.

Without further ado, everyone meet Emily! Emily has worked in transport for around 10 years and is passionate about how to get the most out of Melbourne’s road network. Working in the Smarter Roads Congestion Management Team as an Area Manager for Zone 1 (West), Emily is responsible for ensuring the road network operates as efficiently as it can across Melbourne.

This week we chat to Muhammad, one of our new Incident Response Officers, working to keep our arterial roads safe and flowing! The Incident Response Service’s (IRS) primary role is to respond to disruptions and incidents on the roads, which includes traffic accidents, vehicle breakdowns, and debris in the way. Incidents are managed effectively to reduce disruptions to the road network and to improve the safety of responders and motorists.

Meet Paul, our Senior Signal Optimisation Engineer within the Signal Services team. His team is currently conducting the biggest traffic light review in Melbourne’s history as part of our Smarter Roads Program. We had a chat to Paul about how he got into the traffic light business and Victoria’s unique way of programming the road network.

We recently completed a program of traffic light enhancements along Stephensons Road in Mount Waverley, making this busy eastern suburb corridor smoother, safer and smarter for all users.

Director of Transport Operations, Emily Lodder, joined Minister for Roads and Road Safety, Ben Carroll, on Seven News recently to talk about the 728 new traffic monitoring cameras recently installed under our $340m Smarter Roads program.

As part of the Smarter Roads program’s investment in people, the team will be bolstered to patrol the roads 24/7 to respond to crashes, breakdowns, removing dangerous debris from the road, and assisting road users in need.

Have you heard about Melbourne’s biggest ever traffic light review? Would you like an insight into how we’re carrying it out, and what we’ve been able to achieve so far? All these questions and more were answered by Director of Transport Operations and recent media superstar, Emily Lodder, on ABC Melbourne’s Drive with Rafael Epstein.

Incident Response Officer, Denise Thomson, had a recent brush with fame when she joined Jacinta Parsons on ABC Melbourne radio to talk about her interesting and varied role in VicRoads Incident Response Service, in a segment known as “Odd Jobs”!

Meet Sarath, one of our Lead Specialists in the Signal Services Team. As part of the Smarter Roads program, we’re conducting the biggest traffic light review in Melbourne’s history and Sarath can tell you all about it.

The Department of Transport is undertaking the most comprehensive review of traffic lights since they were introduced to Melbourne almost 100 years ago. More than 850 traffic signals in parts of the west, south-east, and east of Melbourne are being analysed and updated by our recently expanded team of signal engineers to create smoother journeys for road users.

The Department of Transport is undertaking the most comprehensive review of traffic lights since they were introduced to Melbourne almost 100 years ago. More than 850 traffic signals in parts of the west, south-east, and east of Melbourne are being analysed and updated by our recently expanded team of signal engineers to create smoother journeys for road users.

This week we chatted to Cathy, one of our Congestion Surveillance and Audit Officers, about how she was able to transfer her skills into this new role, how she thrives from the challenges of the job, and the power of education and honest conversations!