When something unexpected occurs on one of Transurban’s roads, we want to help. And we want to get there as quickly as possible.
But sometimes, incidents can result in traffic congestion. particularly in peak times and that prevents our response vehicles from arriving as rapidly as possible.
So, we looked for a solution, both locally and abroad – examining rapid-response road teams in the UK, the USA and Japan.
The answer: motorbikes.
Transurban Queensland launched an Incident Response Motorbike trial on the Gateway and Logan motorways – two of Brisbane’s busiest roads – in December 2018.
The two purpose-built motorbikes equipped with water, diesel, petrol, a defibrillator, first aid and jump-start kits were driven by experienced incident response supervisors to cut through congestion and get to motorists sooner to help improve first response and clearance times.
Because when it comes to incidents, we know every minute counts in order to reduce stress and anxiety while also ensuring the safety of motorists on our road network.
During the six-month trial, our motorcycle crews responded to 150 incidents and helped reduce incident response times by 22% to an average time of seven minutes.
Clearance times also fell by approximately eight minutes.
Since the success of the trial, we’ve doubled the number of our motorbike crews.
They’re now a permanent part of our response team on the Gateway and Logan motorways and we’ve just launched a new six-month trial on the Inner City Bypass.
If the latest trial is successful, we’ll look expand our motorcycle response program with similar trials on the Go Between Bridge, Legacy Way, Clem7 and AirportlinkM7 tunnels to help increase safety for all the motorists who used our roads.
