#65 Local Street Management (pt 2) - Initiating LATM

Our previous brief introduced the principles and planning processes of Local Area Traffic Management (LATM), as informed by the Austroads Guide to Traffic Management Part 8: Local Street Management [1]. As noted, the main objective of LATM is to encourage appropriate driver behaviour for local streets, promoting safety, amenity and sense of place through low speeds and management of traffic volumes. Consistent with other concepts such as Network Safety Plans and Movement and Place, LATM is underpinned by Safe System principles.

Having previously identified the six stages of the LATM process in the Part 8 Guide (the Guide), the current brief provides an overview of Stage 1: Initiating an LATM program. Six specific tasks are identified in Stage 1, including:

• Decide that action is needed

• Define study area, precincts and functional hierarchy of roads

• Develop a study plan, including the type of treatments and study costs

• Develop consultation strategy

• Council decision

• Prepare a brief for consultant, if required

Determining the need for action

The need for LATM action may arise as a remedial (reactive) response to observed problems, or as a preventative (proactive) measure to address emerging and future needs in planning and strategic direction. Where reactive LATM programs are frequently driven by a combination of community input and council assessment and monitoring, proactive LATM is typically more driven by council planning process and strategic objectives.

Defining the study area

The ‘formal study area’ for LATM essentially means the area and locations where problems are identified as needing treatment, including the roads and streets with a traffic network relationship to the problem sites, and their functional hierarchy. As put by Austroads (p.29), however:

… the geographic scope of the area of investigations for the purposes of data collection, the study of network impacts, and the public participation process could extend well beyond the study area defined in this way. These two different levels of the study area are sometimes referred to as the primary and secondary study areas.

Developing a study plan

A proposal to council to investigate LATM essentially constitutes the study plan. Included in the study plan should be an outline of scope, objectives and proposed treatments, the identification of specific steps to be covered (or excluded) in the process, expected timeframes, costings and proposed budget, human and other resources needed, and relevant statutory requirements.

Developing a consultation strategy

Austroads notes that it is not always essential to run intensive public consultation during the draft planning phase. However, clear communication with residents likely to be directly affected by changes is strongly advised. Community consultation may reveal safety, access or other issues not otherwise apparent to council and is considered likely to have longer-term benefits around community acceptance and ownership. Additionally, engaging other agencies and special interest groups in consultation is ‘strongly advised, so that needs and likely barriers can be identified before the study progresses into too much detail’ (p.42).

Council decision

A decision to progress LATM action is usually based on objectively measured conditions which indicate a need for intervention. Such measures may constitute a ‘warrant’ (i.e., a statement of such conditions) or other objective assessments of need, which typically refer to indicators such as traffic volumes and speeds, crash rates and frequencies, risk maps, amenity, and/or other level of service indicators. Warrant systems often provide the basis for LATM initiation, but this is not always the case, and decisions may be informed by other policies, strategic objectives and/or perceived needs. Because some degree of subjectivity is invariably involved, ‘warrants for LATM can never be treated as absolute’ (p.52).  Warrant systems also take different forms, including Qualifying, Priority ranking and Action/threshold systems. Figure 1 illustrates the use of warrant systems by Australian local governments, and the Guide provides a comprehensive summary of warrants and their application as part of the LATM decision process.

[1] Austroads (2020). Guide to Traffic Management Part 8: Local Street Management. Sydney, Austroads. https://austroads.gov.au/publications/traffic-management/agtm08