Car parking and active transport

The Telegraph recently featured an article about the availability of cheaper parking on the edges of the Sydney CBD. For people willing to take the hike, they claim it is cheaper to park there than catch the train daily to work from the outer suburbs (they conveniently forgot about fuel and maintenance of the car). Brisbane has similar options for people willing to get a little exercise.

This is great for increasing physical activity of commuters but it doesn't do much for reducing traffic into the city. Interestingly, people who choose to do this do not get captured in the census as there is no 'park and walk' option in the journey-to-work survey.

Another active commute option that is growing in popularity is 'park and cycle'. The improved cycle facilities serving the CBD, and the high cost of parking and public transport make driving and cycling a very attractive option. Where there is free parking that is close to good cycle facilities into the city you will notice the park and cycle  commuters.

Cities Fit for Cycling

The Times in London has launched a campaign to map the areas of London that require improvement for cycling. In a recent post I mentioned a similar bit of work being done by the University of NSW.

It is a fantastic tool that uses the power of the internet to get a whole lot of information relatively cheeply. Unfortunately it does not make the information available to the general public to see what hazards are being reported by others. They may have done that to avoid people copying other people's posts - they hope to get actual users instead of just web-surfers with time on their hands.

By getting all cyclists to become your auditors of safety it is possible to build up a system to prioritise issues in the network. The system will prioritise safety or maintenance issues that affect the most people. Unfortunately it may not prioritise issues that have the most risk due to the fact that most cyclists are risk-averse and will therefore not use routes that are very risky.

Mobility scooters

With the population in Australia aging rapidly there is an increasing use of mobility scooters to get around. The Sydney Morning Herald recently had an article on the dangers of these scooters. Most of the 700 hospitalisations that occurred last year happened on the roads, with falls at home being next dangerous. An average of 6 people per year die from their injuries, the majority due to head injuries.

(source: The Telegraph. 25 Feb 2012) 

There are stories of confused pensioners trundling down motorways on their scooters, but most of the risk to users is just navigating pathways around residential areas. Most of the pathways in older residential areas are only 1.2m wide, if there at all. I have seen mobility scooters being driven down the shoulder of busy arterial roads despite wide pathways because the ramps at intersecting roads are too steep or awkward to navigate.

When planning for active transport networks and designing facilities we are required to provide for mobility impaired users, but what do we do about all those areas where the existing facilities cannot be used by mobility scooters and wheelchairs? Council has recently been replacing pathways and ramps in my neighbourhood but most are still unusable for mobility scooters and wheelchairs after being replaced.

BMW Guggenheim Lab

Rachel Smith was telling me about an exciting project she has the privaledge of being involved in - the BMW Guggenheim Lab. They have a web site, blog and twitter feed.  Here is what it is all about in her own words:

"Rachel was nominated by Enrique Penalosa the former Mayor of Bogota and international urbanist and selected by the advisory committee and curators of The Solomon R. Guggenheim Foundation in New York. 

The BMW Guggenheim Lab is a mobile laboratory travelling to 9 cities over 6 years led by international, interdisciplinary teams of emerging talents in urbanism, architecture, technology and sustainability. The Lab addresses issues of contemporary urban life through programs and public discourse. Its goal is the exploration of new ideas, experimentation, and ultimately the creation of forward-thinking solutions for city life. 

The Lab, designed by Tokyo-based architects Atelier Bow-Wow, is a combination think tank, public forum, and community centre. The theme for Cycle 1: Berlin, New York and Mumbai is ‘Confronting comfort’ aiming to make urban places more responsive to inhabitants needs. Cycle 1 will conclude with an exhibition presented at the Solomon R. Guggenheim Museum in New York in 2013. 

Rachel’s theme for Lab is ‘Dynamic Connections’ which explores many topics including urban transformation, e-mobility and car sharing, open source crowd sourced transport cartography, place making and collaborative consumption. In addition to developing 11 themes of urban public programming Rachel is working with her three lab team members on an ‘urban installation’ to be launched in Berlin on 23 May 2012. 

The BMW Guggenheim Lab Berlin Team comprises of

• José Gómez-Márquez, program director for the Innovations in International Health Initiative at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology;
• Professor Carlo Ratti, architect and engineer who practices in Italy and directs the SENSEable City Lab at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology;
• Dr Corinne Rose a Berlin-based artist who works with photography and video and teaches at the Bern University of the Arts
• Rachel Smith, principal transport planner with AECOM, based in Brisbane, Australia

Who spends more

I have heard about the research on several occasions, but now I know where the report is. The report I am referring to is the Transport for London research into the spending habits of people visiting the London town centres to buy something. The big spenders every month in London town centres are those that walk to the shops, followed by those on public transport. Although people driving to the shops spend more per visit (41 pounds for car drivers versus 26 pounds for walkers), people who walk to the shops visit more often and therefore spend more.

The research should not be misconstrued though. It does not show that people who drive to the shops spend less per month. 78% of car drivers do more shopping outside town centres in shopping centres and so their total monthly retail spend may well be higher.

The results are also skewed by the fact that people within the walking catchment of a town centre are more likely to do all of their shopping within the town centre. Only 60% of people walking to the town centres visit the shopping centres. People further from the town centre would therefore be more likely to only make trips to the town centre on fewer occasions to buy things they cannot buy elsewhere.

What the research does however emphasise is the importance of all modes for access to shops in town centres. I would be interested to see similar research for shopping centres.

The research also looked at peoples attitudes to cycling to town centres for utility trips (i.e. not commuter cyclists). 38% of respondents said that with some interventions, they be encouraged to cycle to the town centre. The main interventions needed were found to be:

• less road traffic - 15%
• more dedicated cycle paths - 15%
• more cycle lanes - 14%

Walk Score

Here is a nice little tool to compare the walkability of an address: www.walkscore.com
The tool uses a simple weighted scoring of distance to amenities such as shops, restaurants, schools, banking etc. to rank how walkable the address is. They have also produced a walkability Heat Map and ranked many US cities.

The tool is fun to play with but has some major limitations that makes comparing addresses not always that useful. Some of these shortfalls that may give strange results are:

• walk-score does not appear to include distance to transit and its frequency in its calculations. It has a separate transit accessibility score (where transit agencies make data publicly available) but this is not included in the walk score. I believe this is a major flaw as the ability to access public transport to employment and major service hubs is a large contributing factor to improving the available amenities within 'walking' distance. Although you may use public transport it does reduce car dependence. 
• Walk score does not include distance to employment opportunities.
• The application is dependent on information being available on the internet. Because of this the city-edge apartment I owned in Pietermaritzburg scored a lower Walk Score that my current mid-suburban home in Brisbane - because most of the amenities within walking distance of my previous apartment are not captured on the web.
• the assessment does not take into account what facilities are available for pedestrians. An address along a major road with no pedestrian facilities would score the same as one within similar distances to amenities but with pathways and crossing facilities.

Economic benefits of cycling & walking?

Neat little graphic from our friends at the Australian Bicycle Council.

If anyone can point me to a similar 'snapshot' for walking, that would be great. I guess at a minimum that it would be double that of cycling (based on mode share averages of 4% for walking and 2% for cycling).

the_australian_cycling_economy.png