Message from the President
Marshall McLuhan famously said ‘The Medium is the Message’. We are exploring how we can improve our advocacy for walking by refining our ‘voice’ and platforms. On the latter, we have been engaging more with the media, and continue to progress a publication on walkable neighbourhoods with Committee for Sydney.
In terms of voice, some may have heard that advocates for change are recommended to articulate ‘positive’ values in their voice, so while we should not be accepting when not enough is being done to improve walking, we need to “come with a solution”. We are taking this to heart and given Minister Haylen’s office a position statement with key actions (see below).
Another aspect of being a “critical friend” to allies, including gentle disagreement. One example recently was the issue of riding on footpaths. While our position is that expanding riding on footpaths is not helpful to walking, we perceived a large risk in wedged by the media as “anti-cycling” and doing harm to the common goal of increasing sustainable transport. In that case, we crafted our media response to focus on the impact of a lack of road space for cycling as the key issue behind the call, affecting both walkers and riders alike - a position latterly backed up by a Finnish study into eScooters on footpaths (Google translate required).
If you agree, I would suggest adopting a similar approach in your own advocacy - offer solutions, and look for common ground where the issue at hand pits one sustainable transport outcome against another. If you disagree, I’d love to hear from you too.
Meetings
On 20 October we attended a Travel to and from School Stakeholder Workshop led by TfNSW. We understand that an announcement in the form of a program with funding is expected in the first half of this year. On the positive side, the issue is personal to Minister Haylen and her office is keen to do something about the decline which is now at critically low numbers (under 40%). Less positive was the workshop focused on parents walking (or cycling) with children to school, rather than children’s independent mobility. Nevertheless stakeholders advocated larger solutions including a Child Friendly City, which would reshape not just parental perceptions but how we design cities and transport modes themselves.
In December we also attended a Cycling and Micromobility Workshop led by TfNSW where we flagged the need for infrastructure for cycling and micromobility (ie bike lanes) so that riding on the footpath could be avoided where possible. We flagged the unsuitability of relying on shared paths where walking and cycling volumes are not low, and our concern with TfNSW’s use of shared paths where cycle lanes are required (and in some cases, even despite planning conditions).
On 11 December 2023 we met with Carla Stacey, Marjorie O’Neill and other members of Minister Haylen and Graham’s ministers offices. We set out our disappointment in the lack of action on walking by the new government to date, the unhelpfulness of comments made publicly by ministers in relation to their approach to roads, and our view that some officers within TfNSW are deliberately misleading them. While the advisors were not thrilled with these home truths, as a critical friend we presented them with a 7 page position statement at the meeting, including the need for a Royal Commission, and for government to articulate a vision for transport, such as a Child Friendly City, to guide how agencies make decisions. We hope to meet with the Minister in the new year and hear of concrete action in response.
Thank you to those who attended the Christmas drinks on 30 November. We hope to do another in-person event in the near future - perhaps a walking tour as was suggested in response to the last newsletter.
We have also increased our board meetings (+2) from bi-monthly to six-weekly, and Lena Huda is now the WalkSydney spokesperson (to the media).
Media Posts
Councils want crackdown on speeding cyclists putting pedestrians at risk, Andrew Taylor, 1 October 2023, Sydney Morning Herald. An example of our new ‘tone’ in the quote “lowering speed limits on local streets to 30km/h would have a greater impact on reducing pedestrian injuries, as they would be more comfortable for most cyclists to use rather than the footpath”.
Inner West Council Plan to Drop Speed Limits to 40 km/h, Andrew Taylor, 7 October 2023, Sydney Morning Herald. “WalkSydney spokeswoman Lena Huda welcomed the council’s plan to cut speeds but said motorists should be limited to 30km/h on local streets. Huda said cities such as Berlin, Tokyo, London and Paris had 30km/h speed limits on most local streets: ‘The global best practice is to set 30km/h speed limits where cars mix with people walking and cycling.’”
They Pay for Themselves - Why More Australian Families are Ditching Cars for E-bikes, Elias Visontay, 8 October 2023, the Guardian. Another example, “the priority given to cars is forcing some e-bike users on to footpaths. … The solution, according to WalkSydney, is dedicated lanes for cars, separated with phyiscal barriers from cycleways, which are themselves separate from footpaths. …' ‘If more people can safely ride on the street, fewer people ride on the footpath’, Huda said.”
Projects / Links
We made a submission to the Federal ‘National Road Transport Technology Strategy’ draft for consultation, flagging the need for collision detection sensors to be made standard, and the possibility of road user levies that are weight-based, which may also impact on the recent growth in SUVs.
We have continued to fight the ‘Western Distributor Improvements’ project to funnel more traffic into Pyrmont-Ultimo, including a submission on this project, on the Pyrmont Ultimo Transport Plan, and direct advocacy to ministers.
We are taking a little more time with the Committee for Sydney Walkability Piece, and are aiming for a February publication. Josephine Roper’s research with City Futures on walking will now be included in the paper, and the checklist is being fine-tuned and road-tested by Committee for Sydney and their contacts.
We were also contacted by a member concerned with the use of shared space and raised crossings and their compatibility with mobility for vision-impaired people. There is an opportunity to develop our position on this issue (noting that has been explored in detail in other jurisdictions, such as the UK, this may be a case of promoting these existing best practices, like tactile before raised crossings. A recent report for the NSW government on shared space also notes that while not formally guided by Austroads’ Part 13 Local Area Traffic Management, for example, the principles could readily be applied to shared space, like visual aids (at 30))
Further Reading
Forecasting Australian Transport: A Review of Past Bureau Forecasts (BITRE, 2018), reveals that state and federal agencies have been consistently wrong in forecasting traffic growth, typically overestimating growth projections. In NSW, we build roads to accomodate future (modelled) growth, so this report basically means we are building more road capacity than we need. In fact, NSW uses a rule of thumb of 3.5% annual traffic growth at the moment, while a Net Zero focused approach must start with Vehicle Kilometre Travelled stabilisation, i.e. zero traffic growth (or better). WalkSydney will advocate for TfNSW to change modelling habits and assumptions, or at least to not build to accomodate future road capacity until the demand manifests.
Jake Coppinger has been mapping wait times at Sydney intersections, and even scored this write up of his work by ABC reporter Declan Bowring in September 2023. Our own advisor and alumnus David Levinson is quoted in the article.
“Movement” is a great book by Marco Te Brommelstroet and Thalia Verkade. Marco visited Sydney in September and gave a great town hall address, key points here, as well as speaking with ministers and parliamentarians at the Friends of Active Transport group in state parliament.
In terms of ‘wedge tactics’ discussed in the start of the newsletter, a good example is this Daily Tele article (subscription required) which scurrilously justifies removing automatic pedestrian crossings because of noise complaints. Because, you know, turning off the beeping at night, making just the beep button actuated, or adopting non-auditory signals like London’s rotating cones just didn’t occur to them. Irrespective, it’s a classic example of how pitching one user group (of walkers) against another is used to justify inadequate sustainable transport outcomes.
Listen to our board member Josephine Roper on Can We Make Sydney More Walkable, on ABC Radio, 8 December 2022.