PLANNING AND OPERATION OF THE AUSTRALIAN TRANSPORT SYSTEM¹

Abstract

The main object of this paper is to review the problem of Australian transport from the standpoint of the system engineer and operations research scientist. One of the principal reasons for the critical state in which our transport system now finds itself is that our thinking and planning have been too compartmentalised. There is a vast amount of high-grade effort being put into solving the problems that confront railway systems, public transport operations, highway design and planning, motor vehicle design, city planning and traffic operations, and so on. However, much of this effort is being wasted because the relationship between these various phases of the overall problem of transport are not fully understood.In particular, one feels it is true to say that our approach is unnecessarily empirical and confined by traditional thinking. For example. we consider that the congestion on our streets and highways is due to some idiosyncrasy of the mid-twentieth century Australian instead of realising that it merely is a registration of his preference for individual transport. There is still a tendency to consider that the only forms of transport with true economic value to the community are the mass transport systems-the automobile is regarded as providing mainly for unessential or luxury transport.Although the fallacy of this kind of approach is obvious to all, it is, nevertheless, no easy task to reorientate our well established policies overnight. Firmly established administrative and technical procedures take a long time to modify and, of more importance perhaps, is the lack of knowledge of the border line country between the different areas of transport. We know too little of the interaction between the components of the systems. Operations Research and Systems AnalysisWhile operations research and systems analysis are by no means synonymous, they are for all practical purposes variations of the same theme when considering the problem of overall planning of transport systems. Operations research had its formal beginnings during World War I1 and many agree that, next to radar, it was perhaps our principal war winning weapon. Systems analysis in various forms started with the more scientific approach to industrial planning, and it has gained theoretical strength from the more mechanistic developments in servomechanisms and control systems. Operations research may be defined as the application of scientific method to provide l A shortened version of an address delivered to the New South Wales Regional Group on 7th August, 1958. Shortage of space has compelled the omission of most of the statistical tables.