The Development of a Transport Meta-Language to Achieve Urban Freight Efficiencies: A Case Study of the Development and Application of the Australian Postal Corporation's ‘Transport Information System’

Abstract

In the mid 1990s the Australian Postal Corporation which is the largest urban network transport operator in Australia, began development of a second electronic transport activity application that would record the activity of vehicles, the products carried and the network points services on a ‘transport duty’ basis. The first system had been a fleet management system. Integral to the development of this second electronic information transport recording system was the creation of an activity language that reflected the actions of product collection, delivery, transfers, supervision, handovers etc. Some 30 major activity tasks could define the network operations of the Postal Authority. Developing the concept of the transport ‘duty’ was the intrinsic data structure upon which the activities and sub-activities were designed. The development of the meta language took some 2.5 years and a national working party's effort to be achieved. Initially the ‘Transport Information System’ (TIS) became the first electronic representation of the urban and connecting postal networks. This development then allowed two very important corporate outcomes: the development of a significant information system that was integral for both existing and future urban transport operations, and the achievement of urban operational efficiencies and sustainability targets set for the corporation.