Agricultural goods can travel more than 1,000 kilometres in Australia from farms to processing, packaging, storage, export facility and point of sale. The travel cost can comprise up to 40 percent of total market price and will vary due to road network conditions including road works, detours, new expansions, location of value chain enterprises and regulatory conditions. In this project, we have produced the first model of Australia’s transport network to evaluate industry bottlenecks.
Transport Network Strategic Investment Tool (TraNSIT) is CSIRO’s solution to maximise transport productivity across the agricultural industry’s value chain. It has been used to inform the Federal Government’s $100 million Northern Australia Beef Roads Programme, modelling 142 million tonnes of agricultural transport representing 98% of agricultural produce, i.e. ~5 million vehicle movements and 15,000 rail trips per year.
I worked on the initial web version of Transport Network Strategic Investment Tool (TraNSIT), which was then recommended by the Office of Northern Australia, and won the Australian Government's Agricultural Competitiveness White Paper. (The team would go on to win a CSIRO Medal for Sir Ian McLennan Impact from Science and Engineering.)
