An Austroads research report aims to help transport agencies maintain their services and minimise disruptions in day-to-day journeys
Multimodal Incident Management (MMIM) explores the ways transport agencies can manage unplanned incidents that disrupt the operations of more than one transport mode.
It requires a coordinated response from multiple road and public transport operators to resolve incidents and restore the transport network to normal operating conditions.
Amy Naulls, Austroads’ Transport Network Operations Program Manager says that transport agencies are under increasing pressures to meet customer needs for seamless connections across several transport modes.
“As transport users, we increasingly expect our journeys to be reliable, with few delays or disruptions. We want our road managers to support seamless connections between different transport modes.
“Austroads members, road and transport agencies across Australia and New Zealand are strongly focused on meeting customer needs, and working to provide a resilient, integrated multimodal transport network.”
The report reviews current international and local multimodal incident management practices and provides guidance to road agencies to improve their MMIM capabilities. The report includes 10 guiding principles and a capability framework.
An integrated multimodal transport network will help agencies to meet growing transport demands and manage incidents that can affect the normal operation of multiple transport modes. Effective MMIM means that both road incidents and public transport disruptions are managed holistically.
To support these outcomes and minimise disruptions to the community, agencies need to develop their MMIM capability, which extends across organisation and culture, to business practices, information systems and technology.
This is a challenge for jurisdictional transport agencies and their respective Transport Management Centres as they are required to extend beyond traditional incident management on single modes. Nowadays, Austroads members are increasingly expected to provide incident management services across multiple modes to support continuity of traveller mobility and improve customer satisfaction.
The report presents a framework to help road agencies build their MMIM capability. Each jurisdiction has different needs, capabilities and priorities, and their agency MMIM maturities will vary. The MMIM Capability Framework is flexible. Agencies can customise the model and target states to suit their respective road and public transport needs.
“Moving towards a harmonised definition and approach to managing incidents will support Austroads’ member agencies and promote better interactions between road and public transport operators, ultimately improving the customer experience,” says Naulls.
Download the report Multimodal Incident Management: Research, Principles and Capability Framework
