Infrastructure giant, Transurban, has published its FY17 Sustainability Report, referencing technology disruption, autonomous vehicles and road developments.
“In our first sustainability report, we highlighted our commitment to understanding our impacts on the community, customers, employees, other stakeholders and the environment and ‘doing something about them’,” said Transurban Chief Executive Officer, Scott Charlton.
“This commitment has not changed and to this day remains the foundation of our sustainability strategy.
“We focused on enhancing our customers’ experience of our service on and off the road by introducing new apps and disrupting ourselves by trialling a new mobile tolling product, LinktGo, that removes the need for an account or a tag. We have also focused on our customer service approach, including assisting customers who are in hardship situations and waiving fees for new customers who are not familiar with the tolling system through our first time forgiveness and account opening programs.
“Over the year, we continued to engage widely with communities as part of the major network development projects we are progressing with our government partners, including the CityLink Tulla Widening and West Gate Tunnel Project in Melbourne, the Logan Enhancement Project and Inner-City Bypass Upgrade in Brisbane, NorthConnex in Sydney and the 395 Express Lanes project in the Greater Washington Area.
“Thinking long term is our final sustainability pillar and underpins our approach to the design and delivery of new road and enhancement projects. In FY17, the CityLink Tulla Widening and Logan Enhancement projects achieved ‘Excellent’ Infrastructure Sustainability (IS) ratings from the Infrastructure Sustainability Council of Australia, for their sustainability performance at the design phase. The NorthConnex project was awarded a ‘Leading’ design rating and is the highest IS rated road project to date.
“As technology continues to reshape urban mobility, we continue to work with a range of organisations to prepare for the eventual arrival of connected and automated vehicles. In FY17, we partnered with the Victorian Government in a series of trials to understand how these vehicles will interact with motorway infrastructure and the social issues associated with their safe adoption.
“This year we were pleased to maintain a ‘World Leadership’ position in Dow Jones Sustainability Index and to be recognised as the leading transport infrastructure company in the Global Real Estate Sustainability Benchmark. Sustainability is a global opportunity. Through our commitment to road safety, diversity, energy efficiency, sustainable transport and road projects, and our focus on climate change risk, we are now helping to address seven of the United Nation’s Sustainable Development Goals. We will continue to track and report on our progress towards these over the years to come,” he said.