About National Performance Indicators
Foreword
The road system is vital to the international competitiveness of both Australia and New Zealand and also serves the important function of facilitating social interaction. As road transport accounts for a substantial part of total transport consumption (over seventy per cent in Australia), the road system must be managed effectively. To help achieve this, we need meaningful and accurate performance indicators relating to the safety, economic, social and environmental outcomes of the road system that are sought by stakeholders.
In 1993, Austroads established a program to develop and implement a rigorous set of national performance indicators for the road system and road authorities. The Austroads Council reached agreement in the following year on the role of the road system and relevant outcome areas for measuring the effectiveness of road system investment and management, and subsequently identified a set of nationally based performance indicators. The indicators selected — following an exhaustive process of consultation with stakeholders including the road transport industry — best represent the economic, social, safety and environmental performance of the road system and road authorities.
This edition, published in 2010, is the 16th National Performance Indicators publication. Updated data is published each year to provide important time series information for the transport industry and the community and to facilitate individual comparisons of the performance of the road system and road authorities.
Austroads leads the world in the development and publication of road system performance indicators and our counterparts in other countries have shown great interest in what we are doing. The publication of performance information enables Australian and New Zealand road authorities to benchmark themselves at both a national and international level, and assists them to improve their effectiveness and efficiency as part of the overall Austroads goal to identify and implement world best practice in the management of roads.
Chairman Austroads
In Australia, the responsibility for the management of the majority of roads is with the eight state and territory road authorities. In New Zealand, the responsibility for roads is with the Commonwealth government.
Each year, Austroads collects and collates performance data on the Australian and New Zealand road systems and the road authorities that manage them. These data sets are termed National Performance Indicators (NPI).
Using previously agreed methodologies, the Austroads national office coordinates the collection and collation process each year obtaining data from sources including all Australian and New Zealand Commonwealth, State and Territory road transport and traffic authorities.
The goal of the exercise is the production and publication of a set of performance measurements that assist in indicating levels of performance, efficiency and improvements in the road system and related disciplines. The result is a set of performance measures that provide for comparisons of data sets for and of road authority jurisdictions for any one year, and timeline information for data over previous years.
The indicators are grouped within sections with headings including road safety, road maintenance, travel time and user satisfaction. Where applicable, all indicators include graphical and tabular representation of performance indicators.
National performance indicators can be accessed via the listing at NPI Charts/tables.
For a complete understanding of the national performance indicators, it is important for readers to view the statistical information in conjunction with the linked Considerations, Qualifications and Methodologies.
Considerations
Considerations are general notes that apply to the overall performance indicator grouping.
Qualifications
Qualifications are specific factors that must be taken into account to understand an individual indicator’s statistics.
Methodology
The Methodology for each indicator is available online.