From 30 systems to one screen: How Main Roads Western Australia built a government-first operational platform

Finding inspiration in an unlikely place

The journey began when the intelligent transport systems operations team at Main Roads Western Australia looked to an unlikely role model: a ride-sharing company’s approach to managing ride demand in New York City. “We had a really good data engineer working with us, and he was looking at some of the stuff that they [the ride-sharing company] had been doing,” says Scott Fennelly, director of real-time and intelligent transport systems operations at Main Roads Western Australia. “It was basically origin-destination data, and it was looking at New York and travel patterns through time, kind of like a time-series density distribution of the network.”¹

This established a clear parallel between the organizations: both needed to understand where supply and demand intersected across a transportation network in real time. For the ride-sharing company, this meant positioning vehicles where riders needed them; for Main Roads, it meant deploying incident response services more efficiently across the state’s road network.

“Their business understanding was similar, and they had made this kind of model available to others to look at. And that was really kind of the kickoff,” Fennelly adds.

Building technology for government needs

Main Roads realized that, like the ride-sharing company, it needed to develop a platform to fully leverage its wealth of real-time traffic data. Rather than purchasing an off-the-shelf solution, the organization made a strategic decision to build its platform in-house, utilizing subject matter experts from private industry where required. This decision was driven by practical realities unique to Western Australia’s isolated location and specialized government systems.

“We find that dealing with internal subject matter experts [who] know what they need, know what they want, have the ability to chat to that person behind the desk, and just move forward with them is the most effective approach,” Fennelly says.

The in-house, agile approach quickly enabled new functionality, uncovered additional data sources, and established new tools. In a world of rapidly evolving technological capabilities, flexibility and the ability to respond quickly to various situations were crucial to the platform’s success. “As technology is changing—and it changes very quickly in this world—we’re able to pivot very quickly,” Fennelly adds.

Technical architecture built for the future

The platform leverages cloud infrastructure from a major hyperscaler along with open-source data and map visualization tools. It ingests multiple real-time data streams and renders them through a high-performance user interface.

Cory Ross, manager of intelligent transport systems operations at Main Roads Western Australia, says: “Everything has to be very responsive because everything is happening in real time. Operators need to have that information, process it quickly, and respond. Time is critical.”²

The architecture follows an open design philosophy utilizing plug-ins. If the team wants to add a new data source or visualization tool, the integration is simple and fast.

This flexibility proved essential when integrating the platform with the government’s unique technology landscape. “We run a lot of bespoke information technology systems and even more bespoke government incident management tracking systems,” Ross adds.

Preparing for a future of connected and automated vehicles

The platform’s open architecture and real-time data capabilities position Main Roads to respond with new or upgraded infrastructure in the future, as connected and automated vehicles become more common. The state recently established a Cooperative Intelligent Transport Systems team, which aligns with the Main Roads roadmap to ensure seamless integration with the existing platform.

“We see ourselves in a position where we need to have data as an asset,” Ross says. “We have to be able to make the quality of the data good enough that we can say this is where all our speed signs are and what speed the variable signs are showing. This is what our lane-use management system is doing, and we can provide that data with certainty to third parties such as automated vehicles.”

This represents a fundamental shift for an organization historically built around static documentation. “The mindset needs to be that the data has to be accurate in real time. Our platform is just getting us started on that,” Ross notes.

Scaling beyond Main Roads to other areas

Main Roads’ decision to build technology in-house has opened up opportunities for broader public sector collaboration. The platform is designed to support other Western Australian government agencies—and potentially, agencies across the country. Rather than each agency building isolated systems, they can leverage the existing platform and contribute to its ongoing development.

“This platform isn’t just for Main Roads,” Fennelly says. “It has the potential to be the foundation for broader government collaboration, showing how public agencies can lead digital transformation in transport.”