Qld delays release of critical road safety data until 2026
Queensland has quietly pushed back the release of critical road safety data by a full year, breaking a promise made 20 months ago.
Critical road safety data will not be released until years after it was originally promised, with the state government quietly pushing it back into 2026.
The Australian Road Assessment Program (AusRAP) data — which maps lane widths, speed limits, traffic volume and road hazards to produce star safety ratings on a scale between one and five — was promised by the former Labor government for public release from 2025.
The star rating system played a crucial role in The Courier-Mail’s Help Our Highway campaign, which secured $7.2bn of federal funding to finish the deadly Bruce Highway and bring the entire stretch up to at least a three-star safety rating.
The state government in May 2024 pledged to make the AusRAP data public, with then transport minister Bart Mellish saying the Department of Transport and Main Roads had started collating road safety data as early as April 2024.
When complete, the datasets will be used by Austroads to create a national map to indicate safety levels for all state roads.
Austroads confirmed it was still waiting on data from Queensland, South Australia and Tasmania.
It has uploaded ratings for larger states Western Australia, Victoria and New South Wales.
TMR had in May, reaffirmed its commitment to report the AusRAP data in 2025.
In June, TMR had identified the need for further analysis of the data.
When asked in September when Queensland’s datasets would be complete, TMR told The Courier-Mail all data would be uploaded and made public by the end of 2025.
However, TMR has now confirmed, 20 months on from its initial pledge, that data is not expected to be ready until early 2026.
It is understood TMR sent in data but after receiving the proposed mapping by Austroads, decided that data provided needed auditing to ensure Queensland road ratings were reliable.
A spokesperson said on Wednesday: “Queensland’s validated AusRAP results, particularly for the Bruce Highway, are expected to be released in late 2025 following rigorous data validation to ensure accuracy and reliability.
“TMR remains committed to publicly reporting reliable AusRAP star rating data and will do so once the current assessment and quality assurance process is complete.”
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Originally published as Qld delays release of critical road safety data until 2026
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