Improving school safety using connected vehicle data

City of Whittlesea leveraged connected vehicle data to inform their Safe Streets to School program approach.

City of Whittlesea launched a pilot project in the Millpark area after the community identified key areas affected by school traffic. This project formed part of their ten-year Road Safety Action Plan and the Safe Streets to School program. The program encourages Local Government Areas (LGAs) to build pedestrian crossings, footpaths, or lower the speed limit to 30km/h within 2km of schools.

City of Whittlesea wanted to use Connected Vehicle data to identify key road safety challenges in six school locations in Millpark. Specifically, they wanted to understand traffic trends at pedestrian crossings and nearby streets during school pick-up and drop-off times. To do this the council analysed congestion, speeds, braking, swerving and near-misses.

Focusing on school crossings and raised pedestrian crossings, the council found that raised crossings were the most effective:

• Decreasing 85th percentile speeds as much as 6km/h and 
• Increasing braking. 

School crossings were less effective with drivers still exceeding 40km/h. From February to November 2024, data revealed 66 near-miss incidents near Millpark schools, mostly classified as braking and steering.

Road Intelligence showed that:

• Surrounding roads experienced significantly higher speeds during off-peak hours in both directions
• 85th percentile speeds dropped by nearly 50% in the AM peak.
• Harsh-braking also occurred during the off-peak and AM-peak, but was significantly higher during the AM peak.

Based on these findings, the City of Whittlesea plans to conduct a network analysis of safe routes around Millpark’s school locations to inform targeted traffic management strategies, such as the presence of supervisors at school crossings.

By leveraging connected vehicles, Whittlesea was able to instantly access the data without lengthy delays in installing tube counts across the neighbourhood. With connected vehicle data, Whittlesea were also able to easily perform before and after analysis on any road with the addition of g-force data.

Connected vehicle data provides councils like the City of Whittlesea with a more efficient way to collect detailed, neighbourhood-wide traffic data. Traditional methods such as tube counts, ATCs, and cameras are not only costly and time-consuming but also cannot provide the same level of data.