The Western Australian Local Government Association (WALGA) RoadWise has partnered with the Western Australian Centre for Road Safety Research (WACRSR) at the University of Western Australia (UWA) to develop a tailor-made Safety Ratings Tool for the state’s Local Governments.

Launched today and with funding from the Australian Government Office of Road Safety, the tool provides Local Governments with an easy-to-use, and cost-effective method to assess the safety of the roads they manage.

LG Stars is a tool that will provide Local Governments with an assessment and understanding of the safety standard of local roads. This will assist and support the inclusion of road safety considerations in long-term works programs and investment decisions.

WALGA’s Policy Officer Road Safety and Infrastructure and Project Manager for this project, Max Bushell said, “While the iRAP methodology is currently being applied in Australia by the Australian Road Assessment Programme (AusRAP) partners using locally specific tools such as the Australian National Risk Assessment Model (ANRAM), the Infrastructure Risk Rating (IRR) tool, and the AustRoads Road Stereotype tool, they were not specifically designed for the unique context of Local Governments.

“This tool fills this need and based on inputs about the attributes of each road segment will assist Local Governments’ staff to better identify possible road engineering treatments to improve safety.

“It will also provide road safety data from across the local government’s network that will help to prioritise works and investment and support staff to respond to queries about investments,” Mr Bushell said.

iRAP’s Global Innovation Manager and Cities Specialist Monica Olyslagers said, “The tool is a fantastic example of local innovation building on the iRAP Star Rating Methodology to meet a local light data need.

“Through iRAP’s Innovation Framework there are several exciting initiatives underway globally that are Made Safer by iRAP and will help countries accelerate towards the global target of halving road death and injury by 2030.”

LG Stars will be provided to WA Local Governments free of charge and when used across all Local Government roads will provide a valuable overview of the safety of the entire Western Australian road network.

Australia’s National Road Safety Strategy aims to reduce the annual number of road fatalities by at least 50 per cent and serious injuries by at least 30 per cent by 2030, and pledges zero deaths and serious injuries on Australian roads by 2050.

As part of iRAP’s commitment as a charity, the core iRAP methodology and the VIDA software is available for use free-of-charge worldwide to help reduce the crashes that cause death and injury on the world’s roads.

For information on how to use and access the LG Stars tool, visit https://www.roadwise.asn.au/local-government/lgstars.aspx

For information on iRAP’s RAPTools suite, visit https://irap.org/rap-tools/

To read more on iRAP’s Innovation Framework and how the charity is working with 111 Innovation Partners and 11 of the world’s leading research centres (iRAP Centres of Excellence) to ensure road safety innovation is aligned to the global infrastructure standard and shared for the mutual benefit of all, visit https://irap.org/innovation/

Images credit: WALGA Roadwise and iRAP