Turning Open Data into clearer transport insights
At a glance
We developed an interactive dashboard that brings together SCATS (Sydney Coordinated Adaptive Traffic System) and TIRTL (The Infra-Red Traffic Logger) data published through Victorian Department of Transport and Planning’s Open Data platform. By bringing together multiple years' worth of data and automating data preparation, the platform helps transport planners and traffic engineers analyse network performance more efficiently. The dashboard supports more consistent decision-making and helps teams identify trends across transport networks.
The challenge
Transport planners and traffic engineers rely on SCATS and TIRTL data to understand how transport networks perform. These datasets can inform traffic modelling, network planning and design decisions.
However, analysing large volumes of raw data can be time consuming, difficult to apply consistently and challenging to scale across projects. Before traffic analysis begins, teams often need to spend significant time downloading, preparing and validating datasets.
These manual processes can make comparing results across projects and identifying long-term trends challenging. With growing demand for data-driven decision-making, we saw an opportunity to improve how teams accessed and used traffic data to support planning outcomes and the design of transport networks.
Our response
Using SCATS and TIRTL datasets provided through Victoria's Open Data platform, we developed an interactive dashboard that consolidates fragmented datasets into one structured platform.
Users can quickly access and visualise traffic information without relying on multiple downloads or complex spreadsheet processing. To improve the consistency of analysis, we incorporated automated data preparation routines that identify and remove faulty data, public holidays and anomalous days from datasets.
Through the platform, users can:
- analyse peak traffic periods and network traffic patterns
- review speed-flow analysis and vehicle type statistics across freeway networks
- identify representative survey days and the 30th busiest day for modelling purposes
- compare weekday, weekend and seasonal traffic behaviour
- track changes in traffic conditions using data stored from 2014 onwards
- explore intersection turning movement data at signalised intersections.
Interactive visualisations let teams examine conditions across different timeframes. Users can investigate a specific location or consider patterns across the wider network, depending on the needs of their project.
The impact
By reducing repetitive and inconsistent data preparation, the dashboard allows transport planners and engineers to focus more of their effort on analysing network performance.
A shared platform also gives project teams a more consistent basis for analysis. They can compare traffic conditions, identify representative periods and examine changes recorded over time without rebuilding the same data preparation process for each project.
Clearer visibility of traffic trends and network behaviour allows teams to assess conditions more effectively and identify patterns that inform planning and design decisions. This deeper insight into traffic movements supports the development of transport networks that adapt more effectively and improve safety for the communities they serve. By making open transport data easier to use, we are helping project teams move sooner from data preparation to decisions that shape transport networks.