As part of Victoria’s Big Build there is an increasing presence of trucks on our roads as they transport material, equipment and machinery. This means more potential interactions between pedestrians, cyclists and motorcyclists (referred to as vulnerable road users) and trucks.
As Rail Projects Victoria conducts our program of works, the safety of our workers and the public is our number one priority.
We are working to reduce the risks to vulnerable road users through a range of approaches:
This has enabled us to more carefully implement and incorporate the safe systems approach into our works:
If you see any safety concerns while traveling around our sites, please contact us.
We are working collaboratively with our contractors to develop truck driver awareness training around safely sharing the roads with vulnerable road users.
Trucks have many blind spots and sometimes it can be hard to see vulnerable road users on the road. This initiative focuses on influencing behavioural change of vulnerable road users, to help them share the road with trucks more safely.
Working directly with cyclists, we used:
These 3 key behaviours now form the basis of the ‘Swapping seats’ events - funded and led by Rail Projects Victoria and developed and delivered by Bicycle Network – which involves:
A best practice guidance has been developed to provide those with responsibility for traffic management plans a source to determine whether the safety of pedestrians and cyclists have been adequately considered around construction sites.
The guideline has been made available to contractors with construction sites which would impact on public areas and roadways.
A ‘Human Impact Route Assessment’ tool has been developed to help construction contractors and trucking companies assess the risks to their proposed truck routes.
The tool includes a number of dimensions such as:
The tool aims to help choose the best routes for protecting vulnerable road users.
We are working collaboratively with our contractors to progressively fit safety equipment to some of the heavy vehicles servicing the higher risk worksites to enhance safety conditions for vulnerable road users.
This equipment includes:
The Department of Transport and Planning has developed new materials to help protect the safety of pedestrians, bicycle riders and motorcyclists when they’re travelling near construction worksites and around construction trucks.
Visit the Construction Truck and Community Safety Project page on the VicRoads website.