Modelling and visualising the potential employment impacts of the COVID pandemic

Cat O’Neill and Jeremy Blake (Waka Kotahi)

Arataki is Waka Kotahi NZ Transport Agency’s 10-year view of what is needed to deliver on the government’s current priorities and long-term objectives for the land transport system. Version 2.0 released in August 2020 had a particular focus on the nature, scale and location of impacts of the COVID 19 pandemic.

Waka Kotahi NZ Transport Agency commissioned research in April to inform thinking as they prepared Arataki v2.0. The research seeks to understand the likely socio-economic impacts of COVID 19 on regions and communities. Three Treasury scenarios have been modelled at the regional and territorial local authority level, and the analysis primarily focuses on what is likely to happen over the next four years.

The scenario modelling is now available through an interactive dashboard tool on the Waka Kotahi website. The tool visually demonstrates the results of the scenario modelling across New Zealand territorial local authorities for the next ten years.

The tool will be a useful tool for identifying areas where Waka Kotahi can better support New Zealand’s recovery from the COVID-19 pandemic.

Cat has been with Waka Kotahi for five and a half years. She has a strong background in geospatial analysis, including a Masters in Coastal Management and GIS. She has been leading the Information Products team for six months, making data more accessible to decision makers across the agency. Recently she has added an open data focus to the team’s work to share Waka Kotahi’s data with wider government and the public.

Jeremy is a Principal Advisor in the System Long Term View team at Waka Kotahi NZ Transport Agency, with over 20 years’ experience in land-use and transport planning. He is currently involved in work across the Agency to identify priority opportunities and challenges for the transport system, including options to enhance land-use and transport integration. He is part of the core team developing Arataki, Waka Kotahi’s 10-year view of what is needed to deliver on the government's current priorities and long-term objectives for the land transport system.

Disruption due to lockdown during Covid-19: Cases and Effects

Chamika De Costa, Jane Fan, Steven Hayman (Waka Kotahi)

Covid-19 has had a significant impact on Waka Kotahi and customer behaviours. This presentation will provide evidence of the traffic response including regional impacts on travel time and speeding, and disruption to renewal of certifications.

Chamika De Costa is a traffic modelling expert, with significant experience in building real-time network performance monitoring models. Recently joined Waka Kotahi to focus on building tools and infrastructure to monitor network performance for the agency.

Jane Fan joined Waka Kotahi as a data scientist in the Advanced Analytics & Modelling team in November 2019. Her background is in Data Science and Economics. Currently, she is focusing on making use of TomTom data to monitor/measure traffic performance and change.

Steven Hayman is a Data Scientist in the Advanced Analytics and Modelling team at the NZTA. He joined the NZTA early in 2020 where he has been applying modelling to regulatory problems.

MoT Air Freight Capacity Scheme

Kain Glensor (Ministry of Transport)

The International Air Freight Capacity (IAFC) scheme supports air services to maintain trade links with global markets, to enable essential imports and for export cargo by providing financial support for international airfreight carriers to guarantee air services on key routes. The IAFC scheme ensures key international trade links remain open for business at a time when border restrictions remain in place and passenger air travel is limited. The scheme launched in May with an initial schedule of 53 weekly flights from New Zealand to key destinations. In response to demand from the business community, the schedule has since grown to support 70 weekly flights as at the beginning of August. Data analysis was central in the initial design, ongoing operation and design of the second phase of the project: data from ACL, NZ Customs, and participating airlines is used to provide policy-makers with insights into the overall airfreight landscape and the operation of the scheme. In this presentation, the analyses will be presented and discussed.

Kain Glensor is a senior data analyst at the Ministry of transport. He is an engineer and political scientist and previously worked as a policy researcher at the Wuppertal Institute in Berlin, Germany, primarily on the topics of sustainable urban transport policy, life-cycle analyses and the interaction of human activities and weather.

Covid-19 Effects on PT Patronage - GWRC

Chris Vallyon (Greater Wellington Regional Council)

A review of Wellington Public Transport trends during the various stages of the New Zealand Covid response and recovery. This will include a comparison of the differences between public and private transport trends, including the unexpected increase in weekend travel post-Covid.

Chris is the Strategic Insights Lead for Greater Wellington Regional Council. He has near 20 years' leading software, GIS, analyst and data science teams to identify trends, R&D, underlying demands and behaviours. His primary focus has been developing Insight related to public and private sector Infrastructure. Use of GIS, Big Data, traffic data & models, current and emerging technologies, delivering bespoke software and analytical tools.

Evidence-based decision making during Covid-19: Auckland Harbour Bridge – ASM / WSP

Tim Cross (WSP)

A moveable lane barrier is used on the Auckland Harbour Bridge to manage lane configurations, meeting demand at peak times. In June 2020, WSP’s Digital Advisory team provided an MLB Optimisation toolset to improve outcomes for customers through smarter barrier move timing. Covid-19 created a lot of challenges to the project, especially data reliability and availability. The presentation will feature insights on Auckland motorway performance through the Covid-19 Alert Levels, lessons learnt and the opportunities ahead.

Tim is the co-lead for the Transport Data Knowledge Hub. He is Technical Principal – Business Intelligence at WSP with over 20 years of experience in digital systems delivery and data governance for transport. He leads WSP’s Digital Advisory team in New Zealand, and is lead advisor for Waka Kotahi’s HSIMS system, which manages all New Zealand State Highway structures.